Yet More Google Estimate Cuts: Big Online Marketers Slashing Ad Spending

Even more Wall Street analysts are cutting their estimates for Google (GOOG), making the reasonable argument that if the world’s economy stinks, that might have some impact on the world’s biggest media company.

Barron’s Eric Savitz summarizes the notes from Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney, Collins Stewart’s Sandeep Aggarwal and Stanford Group’s Clayton Moran. So I’ll just highlight one part of Mahaney’s argument: A check of four big online e-commerce companies–Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Expedia (EXPE) and Priceline (PCLIN)–indicates that they’ll be making dramatic cuts in the amount they spend on Web advertising this quarter (see chart below).

“These companies are staring into what could be an ecommerce abyss and appropriately cutting back on their marketing spend, certainly including their spend with Google,” Mahaney writes.

To recap: Dollars are continuing to move from traditional media outlets online, and Google is capturing the lion’s share of that move. But even Google isn’t impervious to what’s ailing the economy right now.