Last quarter's earnings release was a nightmare of confusion for Google.  As I explained at the time, Google was careful to release only their GAAP earnings numbers, and not to provide the pro forma numbers that analysts use.  Because the pro forma number adds back stock-based compensation, it is usually a higher number than the GAAP number.  And the analysts had a hard time computing a pro forma number for comparison, so it looked like Google hadn't done as well as they really did.

So Google is finally coming around to the same conclusion that their competitors have, which is to release both GAAP and pro forma numbers at once, and save the analysts the trouble of having to calculate their own results.

And kudos for Google for explaining, in all its gory detail, how they will compute the pro forma numbers.

Interestingly, Google's computation is still slightly different from the formula that most analysts use, so Google's conservatively reported numbers may still result in smaller numbers than if they used the more aggressive formulas employed by the analysts.