I buy into the efficient capital market hypothesis so I am not troubled by accounting gamemanship. Market professionals know the tricks and will trade accordingly thereby resulting in the correct market price. Regardless, I think the big reason for the pop today was not the 700% increase but the fact that Google's earnings greatly exceeded Wall Street's expectations.

No offense Bill, but to deny the relevance of reported accounting information and managerial discretion over accounting choices is to deny the findings of literally hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, primarily in the financial accounting literature. To rely on a generic “efficient capital markets” hypothesis is probably naïve given the more complicated picture that a fairly well developed body of research has revealed. A good review of this literature is available in series of survey articles published by the Journal of Accounting and Economics in 2001, Volume 32.

I didn't realize I was "denying the relvance of reported accounting information, etc." The point I was trying to make (which I obviously didn't with you) is that if a reporter at the NYT spotted that the 700% difference resulted mostly from an earlier accounting charge, this is reflected in the market price.