As the Dow Jones Industrials moved to it’s first close past the record breaking 14,000 mark, search engine giant Google (GOOG) stock dropped more than 7% in late trading Thursday from an opening $548.89 to $509.01, and the stock is still going down in after hours trading. Google missed the average analyst estimate, polled by Thomson Financial, of $3.59 per share and a spokesperson for the internet giant stated if it were not for costs associated with employee stock compensation, Google would have earned $3.56 per share. Other sources cite Google Chairman Eric Schmidt as stating the missed earnings were due to over-hiring new employees and costs associated with infastructure. Regardless of the symptoms, the recent sell-off amongst investors is shocking the market makers that Google has so easily pleased with steady growth quarter to quarter.

This year’s second quarter was the only time that Google’s year-over-year profit hasn’t grown by at least 60 percent since 2004 when the company went public. Additionally, this is only the second time that Google’s earnings have fallen below estimates in 12 quarters as a publicly traded company.

On another level, I’ve been seeing a wave of webmasters claiming that they have been unjustly banned from Google’s Adsense program and their Adsense earnings forfeited for “invalid clicks”, supposedly without Google providing any proof of their claims allowing them to breach their contracts seamlessly, much as Paypal has done in freezing accounts. Also on the webmaster level, there are rumblings of Google’s growing incapacity to handle their search engine rankings and that Google has outgrown their freshness and have become a company that exists solely for the purpose of marketing with no concern for providing information services. Although the afformentioned claims have always seemed to follow Google around (at least for the last few years), I definitely have seen the numbers of webmasters crying “foul” escalate and that definitely would impact the sell-off in some manner considering a search engine can’t exist without webmasters.

I personally think Google needs to put the focus back where it belongs and possibly sell off some of their infastructure and downsize this quarter to keep the investors happy. Also, with more webmasters moving to other affiliate programs and finding alternatives to Google’s advertising programs, I think it’s time for Google to hold back on the anonymous bannings of Adsense webmasters and implement a better tracking system to weed out “invalid clicks” such as AdBrite or other programs do. Also, I think most working people are just plain tired of seeing these internet companies like Google that allow employees to bring their pets to work, have toys on their desks and basicly approach business in an unprofessional and unconventional manner while rewarding the employees with lucrative stock options and incentives. When the time comes to do business and get back on track, it’s going to take a lot more than nerf footballs and silly soakers in the office to get the job done.