These non-GAAP financial measures also facilitate management's internal comparisons to our historical performance and liquidity as well as comparisons to our competitors' operating results.

ENGADGET: Google's Q4 2011 results: $2.71 billion profit, $8.13 billion in revenue, Wall Street disappointed

Our management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide meaningful supplemental information regarding our performance and liquidity by excluding certain expenses and expenditures that may not be indicative of our "recurring core business operating results, " meaning our operating performance excluding not only non-cash charges, such as SBC, but also discrete cash charges that are infrequent in nature.

ENGADGET: Google's Q4 2011 results: $2.71 billion profit, $8.13 billion in revenue, Wall Street disappointed

We believe that both management and investors benefit from referring to these non-GAAP financial measures in assessing our performance and when planning, forecasting, and analyzing future periods.

ENGADGET: Google's Q4 2011 results: $2.71 billion profit, $8.13 billion in revenue, Wall Street disappointed