Google wants you to know it's well on its way to taking over the world.

This afternoon, during a quarterly earnings call with industry analysts and journalists, CEO Eric Schmidt focused on the company's "strong international growth" in 2007. "More than half of our search traffic is now outside the United States," he said. "This international market is central to our global role."

Normally, we'd make fun of a statement like this. But it pales next to Schmidt speak from earlier in the week.

In any event, Schmidt is very proud of the company's international growth, and he says there's still "tremendous potential" for further growth outside the US. In Q4, overseas revenue hit $2.32bn, which amounts to 48 per cent of the company's overall revenue. In Q4 2006, international dollars accounted for only 44 of overall revenue.

No, you needn't do the math by yourself. Total revenues for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2007 were $4.83bn. That's a 51 per cent jump from Q4 2006. Meanwhile, Q4 profits were $1.2bn, a 17 per cent jump from the previous year.

Believe it or not, this is bad news for Google. For just the third time in the past 14 quarters, the company failed to meet the expectations of Wall Street analysts.

So, even though world domination is a distinct possibility, Google's stock price is on the way down. At least for the moment. ®

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