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Google Chooses An Underwriter For Upcoming IPO
PenguinSix writes "Bloomberg and a bunch of others are reporting that Google has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to arrange its initial public offering. This follows literally years of rumors and stories about a Google IPO. About a third of Mountain View, California-based Google may be sold in the IPO, giving the company a market value of about $12 billion, the bankers said." Google has become so invaluable to many people (like me) that they could probably raise just as much money with a blackmail scheme.
I was thinking along the lines of:
Trolling is a art,
Is figure out a way us regular mortals to get in on the IPO. :D
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"On any given day there would be a line of 200 investment bankers that would kill their mothers to get the Google deal,"
said Reed Taussig, chief executive officer at Callidus Software Inc., a San Jose, California based company that plans to sell shares in an IPO.
I think I will be SELLING my mom to buy some stock
I'd prefer to see Google sell shares right over the internet through their website, maybe allow you to buy via an online payment service or other immediate means, such as credit card (with a validation period or something like that to prevent fraud.) I'd probably buy a few shares just 'cause I think they'd look cool in frames and would make great geek gifts! :-)
Google's geek following is strong, it would be a shame if a bunch of suits were owners. Good idea to keep it to only 1/3, but how long will that last?
GOO appears available as a stock ticker symbol.
Regarding blackmail, how so? Hasn't Google already been under the scope for fixing searches? Seems a dodgy thing to do once you're publicly traded, but fine as long as you're privately held.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'd buy some.
Even at the possible 7% mentioned, I'm sure it wouldn't take long to make a lot of money considering how ridiculously well-established google is in so many homes and businesses. One wonders how inflated they could wind up looking though. Could the google stigma raise their own market value above what it will be able to maintain? I guess this is why they're selling that 33% and not 49.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
Is there anyone else here who is thinking that having such an invaluable internet tool now subject to the whims of public investors is not such a great thing? I would have rathered that Google stay private forever. That way they can make decisions based on what they think is best, not what will increase their stock price the most next quarter.
GMD
watch this
Only a third of the company is being sold. The principals who made Google what it is will retain a controlling interest.
And since they'll have enough money to buy anything they could ever want for the rest of their lives, up to and including sending a probe to Mars, so long as they retain a controlling interest, it's highly unlikely that any price will cause them to fuck up the wonderful thing that is Google.
The management of Google is responsible for seeing to the best interests of Google's shareholders. So long as that team holds 51% of the shares, the interests of Google's geeky management are the interests of the shareholders.
It's called shareholder democracy. You vote what you own. If the thousands of fund managers and people who buy stock in the market (who will, collectively, own 33% of the company) try to change the direction of Google against the wishes of the few dozen founders and managers (who own the remaining 66% of the company), the owners of the company can tell the fund managers to go straight to hell, and there ain't a damn thing the fund managers can do about it.
It's strongly rumored that Microsoft made a buyout offer to Google, and was turned down. The founders of Google aren't in it for the $12B because there's not much that Google does that requires $12B of paid-in capital. They're going IPO to make sure they, and those who helped build the company with them, get a good payday out of it. They built something wonderful, and they're now being rewarded for their efforts, and they're doing so without compromising a damn thing. To all three of those things, I say more power to 'em.
That guy's site was unpopular, and now he is mad about it. Most of it can be attributed to his whiny attitude and immature approach to life. Google requires your site to gain popularity through channels other than itself.
Dear Google,
I have been seriously evaluating our relationship, and I've concluded you are not offering me what I need to be happy. I feel it is time for me to move on.
Yes, I know it's hard. We did have some good times together. Remember those times when you had "beta" in your name? Then came the time you bought and saved the Dejanews archive. I will always admire you for that. Then there was the time you added News search and Froogle. And all those times that you put those funny little cartoons in your name on holidays and on the birthdays of famous artists? Ahh, those were the days.
But those days are gone. Lately, you have been neglecting my needs as more and more results are being skewed by "link farming."
Then your eyes started to wander, and you started to pursue this illicit "shareholder love." You were wooed by this new lover that had a big wad of cash in his pocket.
Dear, no person can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. There are just too many search engines piled on the heap who whore out search results to the highest bidder. They think that they will never be caught, but eventually they are always found out.
You are just scaring me too much for me to take it anymore. I think it's best for both of us to find some therapy and move on.
Love,
eclectro
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
In other words, since the SEC is forcing them to behave like a publicly held company and publish quarterly reports, they might as well take the money and run -- much as we'd like them to remain privately held.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
They're only selling a third of the company.
The current owners will have absolute control, and won't have to follow the whims of anyone else.
First explanation, their VCs have decided that now is the time to make some money and move on (markets looking up and such). Boring, but very likely.
Or... Google wants to buy somebody. They see an opportunity to do something big. We thought maybe they want to buy a big media company and become the defacto place to buy digital media. Everybody and their cousin seems to be starting online music stores. Maybe Google figures they can leverage their infrastructure and search market share to sell people music in the same place they search. But just another online music store is also boring. What if they bought MGM? Or a big slice of Vivendi? Music and movies.
Think about it.
Serve Gonk.
If you do buy Google on day 1, don't use a market order (especially in the first minutes). If the IPO becomes a feeding frenzy, you could easily end up paying 2 or 3 times what you expected (and yes, your broker WILL hold you to that price, no matter how bad it is). Instead, use a buy limit order to ensure that you pay no more than your target price for the stock. With a limit order it is possible that you will get no shares (if the stock blows past your price). On the other hand, you are ensured that you won't get shares at some outrageous price.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
For all of you hyping Google's IPO, just ask yourself these questions: Who has the most to gain by Google's IPO? And does that entity have any vested interest in Google's continued success? Seriously, what purpose is there to Google's IPO other than paying off Kleiner Perkins?
This is probably the debate that has been going on inside Google for quite some time now (just my educated guess):
Oh please. Where've we seen *that* before ?
:e -watch-watch.org/
Before somebody else does it
http://www.google-watch.org/
http://www.googl
The first is from an equally pissy person complaining about not being ranked where they would like to be, and the latter is somebody telling the first "tough shit".
The google-sucks.org person is in the same situation, and I must say that their "we have proof" (and subsequently not showing us that proof) hasn't instilled any level of trust in their story with me.
On blocking blogs - can you say "GoogleBomb", and even just the natural skewing of results thanks to blogs ? If I ran a search engine, I'd block them from the main results too. I would also check into a Blog-specific search. What's your problem with that ?
Spamvertising - Google added ads. So what ? Are they in-your-face ? Are they flash-based ? Are they obnoxius ? Are they difficult to recognize ? The answer to all is 'no', which you can't say for a whole lot of other search engines. Not to mention that I -have- actually clicked Google-served ads because the ads are dynamically loaded based on the referring page's content.
Manipulation of searches is blatant ? Well excuse me for liking that they manipulate search results to keep things, for the most part, fair. Maybe they have a hidden agenda - I wouldn't know. But if AssCorp decides to syndicate their store-content so that whenever I search for a particular product, I get 200 pages of different 'vendors' all serving up the exact same content and linking to eachother, then I 'm all for Google saying "Hey now - that shit looks a lot alike, maybe I'll bump down the ratings there some."
As for google toolbar 'spyware'. Whatever ?
This doesn't ship with some other application where you get tricked into it. You have to actually download it yourself. Then when you install, you get fully warned about what the Pagerank and the like options will do - send back information to Google. If you don't disagree with that, then either A. disable pagerank (and other features that cause information to be sent back) or B. don't install the Google toolbar.
As for what an IPO will do to Google - we honestly can't tell. Yes, it's easy to think that they'll cave in to demand from the public shares holders to allow rankings to be bought so that their shares go up. So what if that happens ? Is Google to blame for that - or the greedy public shares holders ruining things for the entire rest of the population ? Think about that for a minute.
Regardless.. there's other search engines. You don't like Google ? good for you - use a different one, and quit whining.
It will be interesting to see the financials in the prospectus. Everybody "knows" that Google is profitable, but by how much? How long? What are the main sources of income?
Another thought, the smart thing to do would be a dutch auction, where every interested party posts blind bids in advance for lots of stock, with the highest bids being filled first, then next-highest, etc, until all the stock is sold. This means Google gets every penny they should and prevents investment bankers from underpricing the IPO to create a first-day "pop" in share value, where the IB and favored clients get to flip the stock for the difference between IPO price and pop price.
Remain calm! All is well!
Traditionally IPO shares are initially sold at a fixed price, which tends to be below the price it will sell for in the first few days on the open market. The insiders then have a tendency to allocate IPO shares to their buddies, or family, or the bank handling the IPO, or whoever. Therefore people with "connections" can (essentially) get free money by buying IPO shares and then selling them quickly. If you are lucky enough to have access to this free money, it's in your best interest to take it.
Since the Google IPO is being done differently, there's no opportunity for insiders or anyone else to buy shares below fair market value -- buying IPO shares during the auction gives you about the same price you'd get on the open market 5 minutes after the auction ends. Therefore, nobody gets "free money" as is usually the case in IPOs. This allows Google to raise money more efficiently which, incidentally, is the point of holding an auction in the first place.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Obviously things have changed since 1999 (or whenever this happened). But while I agree with you completely that a limit order is good for ensuring your exposure is limited, people may want to place that limit pretty high, depending on how desperate they are to buy in. And anyone who is risk-averse should of course stay far away, or at least wait to see how the wind blows.
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
Unfortunately once they do this the companies worth will be based on its stock price instead of vice versa. And its stock price will be based on public opinion instead of tangible assets and the like..
Thus, while the original owners will maintain the appearance of control, the value of the company will fall into the realm of public opinion. As a result, in order to maintain company health it becomes necessary to start bullshitting (considering public opinion is based heavily on marketing)...
Et tu Google.
I tried searching for reveiws of some products this holiday season. I have a method of keywords I used to get me past the ads. This used to work great. The google slammers (or whatever they're called now) are getting much much better as a lot of what looked to be reviews were just sites selling. Uggg. Often I would have to go to page 2 and 3 to pick up real review. I ended up using sites recomended by a friend and searched there postings.
I've started looking for/using other engines already. Sometimes when you get too big everyone tries to trick the service into selling.
Like open source preaches options are really important to keep things going.
Google has remained private as long as possible. If their VCs were looking to cash out, they could have done it before the crash. And everyone has been asking them to IPO for the last 2 years to kickstart the stock market. It was smart of them to wait until the DJ was above 10,000, but probably unnecessary.
They probably are not worrying about buying somebody either.
The reason they are going public is because SEC rules force companies with a certain number of owners to go public. The companies have to file all the costly paperwork as if they were a public company, and they lose most of the advantages of staying private, such as not releasing all that information about their activities. There is little reason to stay private, and the extra cash from the IPO is handy for paying for all that paperwork.
The famous case of this happening was Microsoft. Too many employees were exchanging shares privately, and the SEC forced them to go public. They did really well, and you cannot blame their decline on being a public company since the prior management is still running things. OTOH, because MSFT is public, the shareholders can insist on new management, but they will probably wait until the stock goes under $10, and that will be too late to save the company, if it isn't already.
Google is being forced into going public. There is no need to look for extra motives from their investors and management.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.