The Digital Skeptic: Annual Reports Show Year to Forget for Info-Age Giants

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- If the yearly annual statements from Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB) and Amazon (AMZN) are any indication, this will be a year to forget.

American equities are wondering in an unfamiliar hill. A real -- if slight -- rally is afoot, based as much as anything on optimistic annual sales and earnings from the three companies, each of which posted double-digit revenue growth for the full year. Shell-shocked investors then poked their noses out of their Groundhog Day holes and realized the Dow might actually be comfortable with 14,000.

I was stunned.

You should know, 10-K annual report data is what us investor geezers live for. Aside from full-year performance being what matters, there's none of the 10-Q quarterly earnings bogosity. Instead, the 519-year-old financial liturgy of presenting results in comparable tabular form is continued so, as Father Luca Pacioli first did in 1494, investors can soberly compare the balance sheets -- the income statements; statements of cash flow came much later -- for any company.

That gives a sense if those numbers match the larger story the company is trying to tell.

So huddle up and let's take a throwback walking tour of the annual income statements for our "Big Information Three."

Google gone wild
It's Google's economy right? So let's start with this Mountain View, Calif., Web services giant. The company was not shy in bragging about revenues gone wild for a stunning 36% increase in sales -- to a world-beating $50.1 billion.

"Not a bad achievement in just a decade and a half," was CEO's Larry Page's scrubbed, investor relations-ready line.

Even more remarkable for an information age company, there was more real earnings, rather than less, in 2012. Bottom-line net income rose a healthy 10.3%, to $10.7 billion for the 2012 period. Investors ignored the 43% increase in total costs and expenses for the year and off the stock went for say an 8 percentish bull ride.

Digital-age mission accomplished, right?

Well, except when you compare that with the annual income statement story told by the other members of our information-age trio.

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