Operator
And we’ll take our next question from Carlos Kirjner with Bernstein.
Carlos Kirjner – Bernstein
Hi, thank you. Two questions, if I may, ahh Patrick. Umm you hired 2,000 people this quarter versus 1,700 in the same quarter last year, which is a 22% increase. But Google management talks a lot about the opportunity in front of the business. If that’s the case, wh-why aren’t you hiring more people and spending more in R&D. Can you tell us what are the specific constraints that you guys have or imposed on yourselves that prevent you from hiring 3,000 people this quarter instead of 2,000? That’s the first one.
The second is the following, a few quarters ago, I seem to recall you saying that you did not manage the business for margins, but you managed it for profit growth. Yet your operating income is down year on year and even if you are the $200 million is growing very slowly. You could see how investors would look at that and say well, how do you reconcile these things? Now, how how do you think investors should think about this trajectory of operating income growth? Thank you.
Patrick Pichette – Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Ok. So let’s take them uhmm each in step. On the issue of hiring, you’ll notice that ahm relative to last quarter also which is our third quarter is typically a big quarter because we get the influx of the hires we do at colleges and otherwise. We actually decelerated from the third quarter as well. Ahm what we are managing for is, you know we just have a very high bar aahhm for hiring, if you can pass the bar, then we hire you. We also have you know capacity constraints on leadership there’s, there’s a natural kind of number that you can kind of absorb within the culture of Google, it’s really important not to lose that culture and to have a velocity, to have traction. So, there is no sense bringing you know, 5,000 people that we couldn’t kind of bring into the teams and really make them perform in. So, what we manage on the hiring is you know, we have our plans, and ahhh so we have a rate of a of targets of of hires per each of the pals and the areas of the company. And then from there, the next hurdle is really about you know can we find these people?
And then finally, just making sure that we we keep this kind of balance of bringing at a reasonable rate, so that we can actually absorb them in the company without the losing the velocity and the culture of the place. So it’s actually a pretty complex puzzle, but uhmm we are managing it, it’s never perfect, but we are managing it you know to the best we can. So that’s the first question.
On the issue of margins, look we have different, if you think of the businesses in Google, we’re looking for growth, we’re looking for growth in revenue, we’re looking for growth in operating profits absolute dollars, and we’re looking for great returns on investment. That’s the puzzle we solve for.
So, you have you know an advertising business that may have higher margins you know lower capital intensity, than say, another business, which maybe Play, which has much lower margins, great prospect for growth with very large pools of revenue and margins available and we go after them for sure. You have Fiber right, and in the access, which is a completely different kind of capital intensity. But, again, the question is you know, does it promise, or does it have a a a case for large dollars operating profit delivery and high revenue and then a decent return on capital, that’s how we manage it.
