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Comment by robryan | Hacker News Reader

For the quarter, which would be over 3% for the year. Which doesn't seem to bad if your not putting your money into overly risky things. Treasury bonds may be yielding less?

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You're right: The long bond is less, so what are they invested in? "Marketable securities" with 3% yield means that they have something not AAA (which probably makes sense on such a large cash hoard) but there will come a day when interest rates go up. That will cause the value of their bonds to drop substantially.

Hell, I'd like 3% on my money.

Get a rewards checking account: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/775437/

Looks like we have it easy in Australia http://www.commbank.com.au/personal/accounts/savings-account...

Up until a couple of weeks ago -- stocking $USD in $AUD would have had some great retuns.

But Forex risk is real - and should not be discounted.

True. But consider Google's effective inflation rate. A lot of things they care about - say, Palo Alto real estate - are getting more expensive faster than 3 percent. That money is losing value. Spending on acquisitions or otherwise investing in the business should yield a far better return.

If the right acquisitions present themselves, they already do a lot and at their level there just aren't as many easy win companies to acquire. I think if I was an investor I rather them lose a little bit of opportunity on their pile of cash than say drop $10 billion onto something like groupon.

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