That doesn't explain the sudden strong spike in Google's own earnings, it only explains the decline in network earnings. How is Google harvesting some of the Panda changes for itself? As it happens the FTC is probing whether it is unfairly intercepting too many queries itself http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230333990457640...
"it only explains the decline in network earnings."
mapgrep, the original article was centered around the change between Google vs. network earnings. In fact, the first sentence of the article was "Google reported stellar 2011 Q2 earnings but Google's partner sites, which used to account for half of its revenues, showed a massive lag in growth." The original article went on to point out "There is no explanation from Google or Wall Street analysts that I could find."
I'm just pointing out that Google has provided guidance (in both earnings calls) about the reasons for that disparity.
You have pointed to guidance on the "massive lag in growth" by partner sites but not to the "stellar 2011 Q2 earnings" by Google sites. The latter earnings growth is truly exceptional:
Google sites grew 39 percent in Q2 2011 vs 22, 22, 23 and 20 percent in the prior four quarters (!). Foremski wrote, "Google sites' growth jumped suddenly and without any explanation." That explanation is still nowhere to be found.
Something is missing here. I'm not saying it's nefarious or not, and I'm not saying you /need/ to address it, just that you haven't, and that Foremski's question still stands. You seem to be saying (roughly) "nothing to see here," but that appears to be incorrect.
