Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) will report its fourth-quarter earnings Thursday after the markets close. Thomson Reuters has consensus estimates of $7.11 in earnings per share (EPS) and $18.46 billion in revenue. In the fourth quarter of the previous year, the Internet giant posted EPS of $6.01 and revenue of $16.84.

UPDATE: Here are some new figures sent to us from WhisperNumber.com sent to us:

The whisper number is $6.86 EPS, with a Whispers range from a low of $6.45 to a high of $7.14. Over the past four quarters alone, Google has reported earnings (on average) by some 33-cents short of the whisper number expectation. Google has a 61% positive surprise history, beating the whisper number in 25 of the 41 earnings reports where it has tracked the data.

Please note that there is a difference out there between the A shares (GOOGL) and C shares (GOOG). This happened after the company’s stock split, and frankly we have found that most investors do not yet adequately know the difference or which shares they are supposed to be buying when they buy Google stock.

There has been renewed chatter that Google is again looking at acquiring Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR). So how would Twitter help Google? Well, at a market cap of around $23 billion, whatever help Twitter could offer to Google seems too expensive on the surface. Twitter’s primary attraction for Google would likely be its 270 million or so active users, and the company’s advertising revenues have grown nicely, up 83% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2014, for example. Would the company spend that much just to defend against a new entrant in video? Still, total revenue of around $450 million a quarter hardly justifies a price tag north of $25 billion, especially when the user numbers appear to be stagnating.

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Going forward, Google needs to lock down and secure its market share and advertising revenue. The latest data indicated that the digital advertising market is around $140 billion and Google is collecting a third of it. In terms of the mobile advertising sector, Google claimed 44.6% of the global market share, compared to 20% for Facebook. But Google’s share was down slightly over the prior two years while Facebook’s had more than tripled.

In the week before earnings, analysts have given their opinions on Google:

• B. Riley reiterated a Buy rating with a $632 price target.
• Wedbush has a hold rating for Google and set its price target at $530.
• Cantor Fitzgerald maintained a Buy rating and set its price target at $620.

The 50-day moving average is $526.76, and it has acted as resistance over the course of the fourth quarter. Shares tried to break out last week, but the pullback was another failed technical event. The good news is that the $506 pre-earnings handle is just $8 or so above what acted as hard support in January and in December. The 200-day moving average is currently up at $558.52.

Shares of Google were down 1% at $506.30 in the first half of Thursday’s trading day. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $633.88 and a 52-week trading range of $490.91 to $615.05.

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