Thursday's Late Winners & Losers

A swath of earnings reports from tech stocks triggered most of the after-hours action Thursday, and Google (GOOG) was among those stocks plunging after the Internet giant jarred Wall Street with lower-than-expected earnings.

The search engine company, so accustomed lately to throttling past estimates, slid 7.4% postbell after coming in 3 cents below for the second quarter, according to Thomson Financial. Non-GAAP earnings came to $3.56 a share, impacted by higher-than-anticipated expenses. Shares of the Mountain View, Calif., company were down $40.58 to $507.77.

Microsoft (MSFT) was another heavily traded loser even though the Redmond, Wash., software company topped revenue expectations in the fiscal fourth quarter and posted in-line income of 39 cents a share. Shares were losing 2.3% to $30.80.

Semiconductor Xilinx (XLNX) missed fiscal first-quarter profit views by a penny a share and issued soft next-quarter guidance, as fellow Californian Packeteer (PKTR) swung to a second-quarter non-GAAP loss of 8 cents a share on $32.4 million in revenue. Analysts were looking for a break-even bottom line on $37 million in revenue.

Xilinx lost 4.9% to $27.30; Packeteer, which makes wide-area-network application-delivery systems, tumbled 8.9% to $7.60.

A number of tech stocks, however, were on the upswing. Among them was SanDisk (SNDK), which climbed 7% after posting non-GAAP income that, at 30 cents a share, was nearly double what analysts had expected. Revenue likewise came out on top. Shares of the Milpitas, Calif., company flash-storage-card maker were changing hands at $59.85.