After my daughter downloaded two different versions of Firefox on my dad’s computer by accident, it provoked discussion about browser hate. My dad hates the Mozilla Firefox browser and will probably use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer until the day he dies. While making a suggestion on Google Chrome, Dad looked at me with the same seriousness Mel Gibson displayed in that movie Conspiracy Theory and said, “I don’t want anything to do with Google. Before you know, they’ll take over the world.”

I laughed at him, not in a mocking sort of way, but because I thought it was funny, and he confirmed that he was not messing around by handing me the latest quarterly earnings from Google, released to the public on Thursday, October 14.

That was when my jaw hit the floor.

With all this talk about economic hardship and struggle, Google’s third-quarter earnings statement makes it hard to believe we’re in recession.

Technology dominates Wall Street with third quarter earnings coming in at $7.29 billion, $2 billion more than the estimated $5.2 billion.

That’s no thanks in part to Google, who managed to clear a cool $2.17 billion in a single quarter, making the whole notion of recession seem absurd.

Google can thank an increase in their ad sales, as well as popularity of the Android smartphone.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “We remain committed to aggressive investment in our people and our products as we pursue an innovation agenda.”

With earnings of that capacity, Google continues to dominate financially, despite market analysts weighing them in on the low end. Many financial analysts say they’d like to see Google spend more responsibly, but with Google investing in the future by paying attention to the people who support them and technology that will take the business world to a whole new love, others feel that Google is doing just fine by not following their immediate advice.

Affording them the resources to invest some of the more outlandish, yet innovative inventions like massive wind farms and cars that drive themselves. For those of us who can barely eat at McDonald’s after paying our bills every week, it seems crazy to drop that kind of money on something that may never come to pass, but right now Google’s got money to burn.

I wonder if they’re hiring, or if they’ll just start handing out cash to every 1 million search on their browser.