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Google Files for IPO
bobwyman manages to be the first to submit this story, apparently by using his own web service: "Well, the PubSub.com SEC Edgar notification system just sent a message a few minutes ago saying that Google has finally filed their S-1 to go public. See: Google's S-1 which was accepted by the SEC at 2004-04-29T13:53:49-04:00. If you had had a PubSub.com SEC Edgar subscription, you would have been one of the first to see this filing."
"In the filing, Google said that it generated revenues of $961.9 million in 2003 and reported a net profit of $106.5 million. Sales rose 177 percent from a year ago although earnings increased by just 6 percent." - LISnews.com.
More stories are available from CNN and The Associated Press.
If you had had a Slashdot subscription, you would have been one of the first to see bobwyman's advertisement.
i wonder what impact this will on it's company posture overall?
Google stock will go up, then down, then up, then become unpredictable. There, that ought to be vague enough.
w0000t! Does this mean they'll have the money for the moon base?
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The Google IPO has been so hyped that I think the shares will be priced so high at the beginning that they will have no place to go but down.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Estimates of what they will do with all their money?
Now, off to mortgage my house and buy some stock. I just hope they maintain quality of service that they have been providing for so long.
hrrm.
So how long will it take Google to add their S-1 filing to the index?
Or perhaps, is a Google-bomb in the works?
For the past year or so everything has been Google this or Google that. Maybe now everyone will stop talking about Google, and it will enter the same category as Yahoo etc. And the need of constant growth will move Google away from their core business as already evidenced with gmail. So instead of one strong focus, it will become one of many mediocre services.
...promote their IPO on their main website? So far, they don't appear to be doing this... but wouldn't that pump up the price quickly? (IANA stock broker)
I must leave work and rush to the bank and drain my account for Google!
How soon will we be allowed to short it?
"Extremism in defense of liberty is more fun."
...try this one from the good old boys at .com.com.com.com.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Heard tommorrow morning at Google HQ:
"If I live through today, I'll never drink again..."
Looks like it's time for me to find a different search engine.
It's not that I don't trust a board of highly paid incompentent people to make technology decisions...it's just that...I...
No, wait, that's exactly it. 5 years from now they'll be restating their earnings for 2005 because of some black voodoo in the finance dept, you watch.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Unless you know Somebody, you won't have to worry about "should I buy some of this" or not, because you won't be able to GET any stock until after it skyrockets, then rebounds, then goes up some more, then rebounds some more, then you can get it at a handsome sum.
Bloomberg has info about IPO share auction:
0 6& sid=aLjRy1totEDQ&refer=home
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100000
By becoming public, google loses the ability to continue with constant steady growth and innovative R&D. These things will invariably lead to short sighted planning by the management to "make the numbers" for the next quarter, 6 months, or year. "Growth" will be expected year after year - the innovative ideas that have made google so successful will give way.
No, I won't bid on a share. I would hope that the IPO never happens, as google is still a quality company. I would hate to see that all change.
Stop corporate
How long after the stock goes public will the general population be able to purchase some? What's the game plan for these people - is Google worth the buy?
mix_master_mike
vafrous
"If you had had a PubSub.com SEC Edgar subscription, you would have been one of the first to see this filing." - was this advertisement strictly necessary?
They say that these IPOs will be offered to "Joe Public" as well, riiiiight.
How many of us here will have the oppurtunity to buy shares when they go up for sale?
Sure they will go to "Joe Public" if Joe has corporate level friends with finacial connections, polictical people with favors to be paid in IPO buying oppurtunities, and all the secret level dealings that we have come to know and love in the finacial industry.
This stock is going to fly straight up for the first few months.
Then it's going to tank.
Then everyone will buy it at $1 a share.
It'll repeat this cycle for a while before stabilizing. In the meantime expect Ads to start flooding google.com as they try to meet their new quarter numbers as expected by share holders.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Right from the horse's mouth. There's already a crapload of articles. Of note, they're doing a Dutch Auction IPO and want to earn $2.7B, although speculation puts this closer to $20B. The underwriters are Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Here's the actual text of Google's filing to the Security Exchange Commission
From the Introduction to the Letter from the Founders:
Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.
The coolest voice ever.
The initial option grants to many of our senior management and key employees are fully vested. Therefore, these employees may not have sufficient financial incentive to stay with us.
Many of our senior management personnel and other key employees have become, or will soon become, substantially vested in their initial stock option grants. While we often grant additional stock options to management personnel and other key employees after their hire dates to provide additional incentives to remain employed by us, their initial grants are usually much larger than follow-on grants. Employees may be more likely to leave us after their initial option grant fully vests, especially if the shares underlying the options have significantly appreciated in value relative to the option exercise price. We have not given any additional grants to Eric, Larry or Sergey. Larry and Sergey are fully vested, and only a small portion of Eric's stock is subject to future vesting.
Have you Meta Moderated t
... As if a million investors cried out in simultaneous orgasm,
-1?
You don't think this is going to cause one of the most useful sites on the internet to implode due to the weight of super-hyped publicity leading to a high initial stock price, subsequent drop (crash), and crazed profit-driven shareholders who don't mind huge banner ads and annoying tie-ins as long as it holds some promise of regaining them their lost money?
Bah, I'm getting "black hole" insurance tomorrow.
what, what?
1) An IPO is a huge distraction. I doubt, given the hype, they'll be able to stay focused on their competitors.
2) Their competitors are coming on strong. Y! is making gains in the space.
3) They could suffer from a huge brain drain. If the IPO is uber successful then a lot of folks will get very rich and leave.
That being said, I wouldn't mind having some $.25 fully-vested google options right about now...
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
Can anyone recommend a good source for buying stocks online? Most sites i've looked at want at least $500 to start, but I don't think i'd but more than a hundred or two into Google.
symetrix. We are building a religion, a limited edition.
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
[...]
We face significant competition from Microsoft and Yahoo.
We face competition from other Internet companies, including web search providers, Internet advertising companies and destination web sites that may also bundle their services with Internet access.
After all the false starts, it's good to see Google going balls up for the IPO. Good luck, guys, hope it does you well.
This sig no verb.
Unlike most of the posters to /. I don't see Google as a great investment opportunity. I suspect the shares will peak early and slowly fade away over the coming year.
It will be interesting to see how this 'secretive' company deals with the eyes of Wall Street types on them. The truth is out there ;-)
bobwyman manages to be the first to submit this story, apparently by using his own web service: ... "Well, the PubSub.com SEC Edgar notification system just sent a message ... If you had had a PubSub.com SEC Edgar subscription, you would have been one of the first to see this filing."
Bobwyman, you are are true genius: you managed to graft your shameless plug to promote your site on an important-ish, but totally unrelated, piece of news, make it into one of the most blatant piece of advertisement article submission, and on top ot it manage to get the story accepted by the Slashdot crew. Brilliant! You are my all-time favorite astroturfer.
Note to Slashdot crew: nobody cares about PubSub. Do you guys own stock or something?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Any information on a Friends and Family offering?
--D
Google, once an independent company with nobody to answer to but themselves, must now face the money-grubbers of Wall Street and their indifference for technology in the face of profits. I'm not trying to troll....this is just MHO.
Looks like they're going with the share auction plan. Seems like the SEC filing is buried, but the key details seem to be:
1) Underwriters manage the auction
2) You pre-qualify, etc.
3)You bid (and can multiple bid - ie, one bid for 9K shares at $20, another bid for 1K shares at $40, you'll get 10K shares if the price is $15)
4)The reject "manipulative" or "speculative" bids
5)They calculate a clearance price that'd sell all the shares offered according to the bids, and accept bids accordingly
6)They determine whether to hand out all the shares bid, give everyone 80% of what they asked for, give the bid/little guys everything they asked for, or let original bid price determine who gets everything they asked for.
I'd be really interested in what some professional equity people think of this process, it seems really interesting to me.
I hope Google keep to their game-plan that's made them the best, and richest search engine in the world. I hope shareholders don't start voting for popups on the main page, and lots of links to cheap holiday deals.
Get your own free personal location tracker
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=as cii&q=google&btnG=Search+News here.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
From the SEC form:
Eric Schmidt Employment Agreement
We have entered into an employment agreement with Eric Schmidt, our chief executive officer. The agreement provides that Eric will receive a base salary of $250,000. Eric was also granted an option to purchase 14,331,708 shares of Class B common stock at an exercise price of $0.30 per share pursuant to this agreement and was permitted to purchase 426,892 shares of Series C preferred stock at a purchase price of $2.3425 per share.
How long does he have to wait until he can sell? I'm sure he's got the date circled on his calendar.
Casual Games/Downloads
Although of course this was inevitable, it is somewhat disheartening. Google will become a company that is steered by stockholders. As everybody knows, most stockholders don't care about being not evil, or really anything other than profit.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the guys who own Google currently like profit, but public companies are different. A stockholder wouldn't normally feel bad if the company they owned some fraction of used terabytes of user information for slightly shady practices. The only publicly held company I truly trust is Apple, and of course there's no logical reason for that.
- Allen Pike
Altering time, one time at a time.
This, of course, has some Underwriters worried, given that a fee in the range of 5% could yeild over 100 million dollars for an IPO such as google.
Many believe, however, that this will not indicate a trend due to the fact that this may be easy for google, because they are allready a household name. In most other cases, an auction will not be so easy.
Top ten reasons not buy Google IPO
Except Google actually makes money.
But you are right in that the price will spike & then crash.
I'm hearing numbers like $20 billion being tossed around as the starting point for Google's valuation. I have to wonder, though, where this is coming from. Does Google really have the ability to grow fast enough to justify that kind of price? Based purely on current earnings, one might expect a couple of billion; allowing for significant growth, perhaps 4 or 5 billion. But 20? Are we just getting nostalgic?
Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
http://www.mozdex.com :)
:)
Search engine built on Open Source technologies and will never have to worry about coming too corporate.
Goal is to use an open api, open algorithm and disclose everything there is about search and search technologies. Will even be launching a blog shortly.
Well, this isn't about the Google IPO, but it is about an open source project with ambitions to play the game google does without all the corporate mumbo jumbo and no need to IPO.
Index is about 50 million pages during beta but we are about to roll out our 250 million page corpus.
Let us know what you think
In other news, Microsoft has put aside half its cash reserves to purchase 51% of these new shares. Mass suicides and hysteria begin.
- Allen Pike
Altering time, one time at a time.
Google's IPO is not an IPU!
Isn't there some clause in an IPO where you are not allowed to do anything new for awhile before the offering? Does this not count for Gmail because they already announced it? Or is the actually time of going public so far down the road that it doesn't matter.
"Loose" the money? I'd rather tighten the money, but thanks anyway.
... that Google hadn't already filed for IPO. I'd have thought that a successful business like Google would already have IPO'd to raise some funds.
Most people don't know much about investing or even money in general.
More then a few outstanding ideas have died or at least not lived up to their potentials due to bad implementation, planning or management.
Myself I'm not convinced 1 that google is a long term financially sound company.
The IPO price will probaly be too high to justify what value they do have.
And most importantly. There are probaly more established companies with a history of performance that will offer a better return with less risk.
I hope they get a "GOO" ticker symbol.
Sweet precious GOO.
1. I, for one, welcome our new beowulf cluster dot-com overlords.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Interesting El Reg article claiming Arnold Schwarzenegger Henry Kissinger and other dubious characters were offered first dibs on an IPO.
NY TIMES article for the registration impaired.
Google Goes Public? The Rich Get Richer By GARY RIVLIN
tiger Woods has his small stake. So do Shaquille O'Neal, Henry A. Kissinger and Arnold Schwarzenegger. All can be counted among that small club of people lucky enough to own a sliver of Google, one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley and what could be the hottest deal on Wall Street this year.
Michael S. Ovitz, once a top Hollywood agent, pulled strings in an effort to enter a pool that was being offered to a group of rich investors and would eventually own a small piece of Google. But that was in the late 1990's, and apparently his star was already fading. Mr. Ovitz was turned away.
The question of if and when Google, the world's most popular search engine, might finally proceed with an initial offering of shares to the public has captivated Silicon Valley in recent days. That is because it nears a deadline this week to provide a financial disclosure document required under the 1934 securities law.
The company has not declared its intentions, but Google is the most anticipated public offering since the dot-com bubble burst four years ago.
People speculate. People dream. And if the numbers are to be believed, people will drool. The current prediction is that Google, if it decides to sell shares to investors this year, would probably end up with a market value of $20 billion to $25 billion by the end of its first day as a publicly traded company.
A $25 billion market value would instantly make Google worth more than Lockheed Martin, the big military contractor; Federal Express, the package delivery service; or Nike, the sports clothing maker.
As a great many people have learned the hard way in recent years, things don't always happen as the experts predict, especially when a company is involved in the high-risk realm of technology.
"It's bound to happen," Andy Bechtolsheim, who was the first person outside the company to invest in Google, said of the long-awaited public offering. Mr. Bechtolsheim, a founder of Sun Microsystems, said he owns a little more than 1 percent of Google. Assuming a huge opening day, the $200,000 he invested in Google in 1998 could be worth at least $300 million. Not everyone would fare as well. Many own a small stake in Google through an investment syndicate that included lots of Internet failures, and would stand to make only a modest profit on their total investment, if anything.
The list of those expected to profit handsomely if Google proceeds with an initial public offering certainly includes the usual suspects. Start with the company's two young founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who started Google as graduate students at Stanford and are known affectionately as "the boys" among Silicon Valley insiders.
Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, now in their early 30's, together own an estimated one-third to one half of Google, depending on which insider's number deserves credence.
"In a way, it doesn't make a difference whether the boys own a third of the company or half," said a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who spoke on the condition he not be identified because Google is a secretive company. "We're all living in a Google world now. You can safely say," he said, that "both of them will be worth in the many billions."
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, the two venture capital firms that invested in Google in June 1999, just as Google was becoming a daily tool of the digital elite, each own 11 percent to 14 percent of the company, several Silicon Valley venture capitalists say.
The list of institutions that stand to make a small fortune from Google includes two of its potential rivals, America Online, now part of Ti
HERE is the link
Traditionally, the NYSE won't list a company with more than one class of stock. But they've softened that criterion in recent years.
Darl McBride's eyes turn to dollar signs as he realizes that Google runs on Linux boxes...
I think those preaching "run out and spend all your money to buy Google stock because you'll get rich" need to sit back and think realistically for a few minutes.
The main thing to remember is: the 1990's are over. That was last decade, this is now. Over-inflated stock prices with P/E (Price to Earning) ratios that are ridiculous are mostly gone now. Sure, Google's stock will probably do ridiculously well for the first few months. However, if everyone thinks this, it will just be artificial inflation waiting to fall out as long-term investors realize that the stock price is way higher than it should be for their earnings. No matter how much some of us dislike Microsoft, would it make any sense for Google, whose earnings are only an inkling of Microsofts to have a stock price that soars far beyond Microsofts and through the roof to match the likes of what Intel and Amazon used to trade at (hundreds of dollars per share)?
Those are just a few of my thoughts. I plan on investing in Google but only as a long-term option, because I believe that they will do well in the long run, but that their stock price will be overly affected by "announcements" of new features etc. Their business model is fairly narrow (e-mail, search services / advertisements, price-searching etc...) and does not have many sources of revenue. Who knows, maybe they can get rich off the search boxes they sell to companies to use to search data on company networks?
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
Search results for time-honored keyword porn brought a paltry 10 hits. What do you expect me to do with that!!!?
;-)
Quack, quack.
News.com.com reports that you are wrong. To quote:
In an unusual provision for a technology company, Google will create two classes of shares with different voting rights, a move that aims to guarantee founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will maintain decision-making authority...
"In our opinion, outside pressures too often tempt companies to sacrifice long-term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations. Sometimes this pressure has caused companies to manipulate financial results in order to 'make their quarter.' In Warren Buffett's words, 'We won't smooth quarterly or annual results: If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you."
The founders have also fought to maintain their control over the company even as it hired Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt in 2000. According to the document, Page and Brin said that they will run the company as a "triumvirate."
We anticipate that the initial public offering price will be between $ and $ per share. WTF?!?
As some one said sometime before, Google right now seemed as if they were offering well thought SERVICES. When it is no longer controlled by some thinking heads, but rather by a gigantic group of hungry shareholder wallets, these services would become NEEDS FOR PROFIT...
But, who knows...
__
Sig: Marine Stock Photos
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
Did anyone else find it interesting that Google's Proposed Maximum Aggregate Offering Price is equivalent to e*(10^9)? ($2,718,281,828) I think this is Google's way of telling us geeks that everything is going to be 'ok'.
-- Kleptotherapy: Helping those who help themselves.
First time the SEC's been /.ed?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Here's the wsj article(for subscribers).
An interesting paragraph-
"According to the filing, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt made $ 250,000 in salarly and got a $301,556 bonus last year, plus other compensation of $2,894. Co-founders Mr. Brin, now president of technology and Mr. Page, now president of products, both got salaries of $150,000 and bonuses of 206,556.".
And you can compare the pay with other US companies. Other companies can learn from google here.
For those worried that Google will become a wall street pawn, here's what the founders are doing about it-
"The offering documents were filed with a lengthy letter, called the "Owner's Manual" for the company. In it, co-founder Larry Page said he and co-founder Sergey Brin have worried that the "standard structure of public ownership may jeopardize the independence and focused objectivity that have been most important in Google's past success and that we consider most fundamental for its future."
As a result, the founders "have designed a corporate structure that will protect Google's ability to innovate and retain its most distinctive characteristics."
Part of that will be a dual-class structure, in which the founders will hold a higher-vote class of stock that will allow them to control much of the company's fate.".
Bottom line? Once you go public, wall street makes you ride to its tunes. Preventing that at google will establish it not only as the intelligent company but a financially astute one too.
Side note-Berkshire hathaway is planning to soak up as many shares are available.
Any ideas what Google will do with the money it raises?
lets hope the portions of the net we can't access, can't go down so easily - like .mil for instances or the arpanet (if it is still called that)
"If you had had a PubSub.com SEC Edgar subscription, you would have been one of the first to see this filing."
:) God bless our system lol.
Well the companies trying to make a buck on Google's name already begins
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
That VALinux did when they had their IPO.
$300+/share then promply drizzled down to $2 many years later. Of course they could also be like cisco and shoot way up... Hard to say.
Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served--as shareholders and in all other ways--by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.
If Google were a woman, I would ask her to marry me.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
hahahaha rock on!
"It's okay if it happens to your finger. Yes, you can prick your finger, but don't finger your prick. No, no."
What will they think of next?
http://google-ipo.com/
That site has been around for a while, a unofficial google ipo watch.
Useful.
these are some very valid points, and contain some of the reasons why I'm considering NOT buying google, at least until the share prices stabilize.
If you had had a PubSub.com SEC Edgar subscription, you would have been one of the first to see this filing.
:P
Several others have already complained about this, but it's ridiculous the editors kept this blatant advertisement for another service in the story. Unless of course they get a cut of anyone who signs up for the service.... seriously though this was totally unnecessary. What I made sure NOT to do was go to his web site, as I knew there would be comments in this story with links to other stories about the IPO.
Thanks but no thanks, PubSub.com.
Joseph?
Well at least it is not self promoting....search for mozdex on Mozdex and you get not mozdex as the first hit
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
This will stop your worries
In an unusual provision for a technology company, Google will create two classes of shares with different voting rights, a move that aims to guarantee founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will maintain decision-making authority. Such structures have proven beneficial in media companies, such as The New York Times, the filing states.
So this mean Larry and Sergey will still drive Google and everyone knows how they work. I don't think they will just react how wall street wants them to react.
I mean, come on, didn't anyone other than MSN have a description of Dutch Auction IPOs?
Don't click on parent link unless you like 5000 old men gay porn windows on your screen.
Where is the project going to get the thousands of systems needed to make a cluster which could minimally compare to the one google uses?
Searching is not just a matter of good algorithms. There is power needed to push it all around the insulting amount of information out there.
__
Sig: Marine Stock Photos
NASDAQ is already in a declining pattern, breaking most of its moving averages in a downward position. Google will have the privilege of IPO'ing into a general market selloff.
As if anyone doesn't know what Google's URL is ...
Since I'm not personally someone who does a lot of stock trading, here's my stupid question. For someone like me who has a ROTH IRA, 401K, checking account and a mutual fund account, how would you buy shares in this upcoming auction for Google's IPO? Is it a matter of just telling my local broker to get in on the auction?
Ok, somewhere in that Edgar filing it says that Sergey and Brin both have about 38M shares. Someone else has options to buy 14M at $0.30. Figure the stock could go up very high (lets say $70, which I think is on the low side). Do the math, that's way too much money. I think S&B should donate some of their $5 Billion to /. users.
I myself have been wondering what their ticker might be too. GOO seems like a good call, as GOOG just seems kinda stupid, except for the fact it's a one of those words, can't think of the name... palandrome or whatever. Sadly, G is already taken by Gillette. Even GG, GGG, and GGGG are taken. Even if they wanted to go back to the roaring 90's, GCOM is taken too. Dang, forget domain name squatting, sounds like a good buisness in ticker squatting.
After the Nasdaq bubble burst some years back, the stock market was quite cautious. But now it seems everyone is getting relaxed again and are willing to invest in quite more serious internet companies.
And which company is more serious than google?
I am not any expert, but don't you thinks the price of the shares are going to rocket up into incredibly ridicolous prices? Way way way much higher than the price they actually deserve (and that real price can still be high, but they will be come much more inflated). Everyone wants to be google. I've met people that would put money in the stock market for the first time, just for google. Google looks like a perfect bet for everyone, but of course, it is impossible that EVERYONE WILL WIN.
There are going to be big big losers after these. The question is, who?
(It even has nice name for a new beta google service: www.googlebubble.com )
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Sig: Marine Stock Photos
7) Profit !!!
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
From the "owner's manual" in the S-1. Read the rest at http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000 119312504073639/ds1.htm#toc16167_1
LONG TERM FOCUS
As a private company, we have concentrated on the long term, and this has served us well. As a public company, we will do the same. In our opinion, outside pressures too often tempt companies to sacrifice long-term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations. Sometimes this pressure has caused companies to manipulate financial results in order to "make their quarter." In Warren Buffett's words, "We won't 'smooth' quarterly or annual results: If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you."
If opportunities arise that might cause us to sacrifice short term results but are in the best long term interest of our shareholders, we will take those opportunities. We will have the fortitude to do this. We would request that our shareholders take the long term view.
Many companies are under pressure to keep their earnings in line with analysts' forecasts. Therefore, they often accept smaller, but predictable, earnings rather than larger and more unpredictable returns. Sergey and I feel this is harmful, and we intend to steer in the opposite direction.
1 Much of this was inspired by Warren Buffett's essays in his annual reports and his "An Owner's Manual" to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.
They were forced by an early 1934 law that mandates that a company disclose with the SEC once they reahc 500 employees.
I dunno how I feel about this. On one hand, you shouldn't be fored to, basically, become a public company if you don't want to. On the other hand, I can kinda see where the basics of this law were/are going. By forcing Google public because of the 500 emp number, you're forcing a company to diclose all sorts of things it didn't have to before being private. To see a company with more nefarious motives and operating methods who comfortably stay below the radar for this reason, then check out the Carlyle Group (http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html).
Anyway, I suppose I support the opening up of some things by one of the most influential information companies in the world. Will this change many things? Prob not, cept make a bunch of the employees a lot richer. Will this help the tech sector bounce back? Man, who knows and maybe, who cares?
This is funny, but sadly true if you apply it to not just Google, but the entire 'tech' industry. All the investors who didn't have much of a clue to begin with and got burned by the original tech bust will prarie-dog back up and say 'Oh, tech stocks are hot right now. Google is at $898 a share.' and then proceed to invest like lemmings in 'the next Google'. Problem being, there's only one Google. Should be interesting to see how this plays out, anyway.
Offered IPO priced stock to us loyal developers that build the technologies they employ... Google? Do you hear me? I really like what you guys are about.. I can put a lot more energy in to linux and other projects if I didn't have to work so much so this sounds like a win win type deal to me.
They should have used phi, then there would be conspiracy theories which in my opinion would fit perfectly with the way google is moving. ;)
Google would be ruled by some secret society which fights either for the truth (dont do evil) or by a false truth (Insert here whatever your imagination wants).
Maybe Dan Brown could make another best seller about it.
__
Sig: Marine Stock Photos
Just FYI... I didn't see anyone post a link to Google's Press Release about their registration. Maybe I missed it, but there it is.
I'm sure that I'm in the minority here - but I hate to see Google do this. It seems to me that once you go public, then you have to answer to your shareholders. No longer can one spend money on interesting but probably unprofitable exercises. No longer can you make decisions based on the right thing to do (i.e. text-only ads). And googlelabs will either dissapear or become really dull - and the main page will become cluttered with ads.
:(
Google has been a bright spot on the internet for years - my guess is the ipo is the begining of the end.
Now, do these folks deserve as much money as they can get - I think so. But I also think that most of the origiinal google people already have more money than they know what to do with - is more money (even 2 billion) worth giving up creative control?
Greg
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
...why there were blue-shirted Google employees standing at the parking lot entrance this morning, greeting and occasionally stopping each incoming car at their new Mountain View campus (not the HQ building, but the ones recently vacated by SGI).
Normally, this lot entrance is completely obstacle-free.
.@.
one of the more interesting facets of an S-1 is that you include the top 5 salaries of your company
Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer and Director
$ 250,000 $ 301,556
Sergey Brin, President of Technology and Director
150,000 206,556
Larry Page, President of Products and Director
150,000 206,556
Omid Kordestani, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations
175,000 394,456
Wayne Rosing, Vice President of Engineering 175,000 151,314
The value to be raised is "$2,718,281,828", or $1 billion times e. Cute.
Based on the 80 million for Q1 2004 (with expenses for that of 9 million, Q104). Google says that the margin for Google Network is lower than that of Google's own ads. But, as "We share most of the fees these ads generate with our Google Network members," some people are making some nice money with Google. Time to stop posting on Slashdot and start improving my own websites.
If you follow the Lucene (Index) and Nutch (spider) mailling lists you will see the talented bunch of people that work on this project. From the likes of people who worked at the original Webcrawler.com, Excite, Inktomi and even Yahoo and Overture systems.
:)
I think we can do it
...ought to have a special graphic for the occasion, as it does holidays and such.
Perhaps change the 'O's to coins.
Or blue chips, to be optomistic.
In this scenario, the share price would be determined by the first bidder, the highest bidder.
Are there restrictions in place to keep a company from doing this? Is it a bad business idea, b/c the voting rights are lower than the original owners?
Holland
Let the evil begin!
half of the most skilled search engineers in the world work for Google.
Google collects degrees, so in that sense you're right. They have an obscene collection of people with degrees from famous colleges.
So, if you believe that prestige and degrees accurately qualify skill level or potential for brilliance, then you're right.
For those of us that remember that GWB got a degree from Yale and Einstein got a teaching certificate from a technical college - or perhaps that Microsoft employs an obscene collection of fantastically talented people working on theory that few others understand - perhaps we are not so willing to discard the perspective that performance, contributions and results are the standard of excellence rather than paper certificates.
SEC: ...and 31 cents.
Google: Dammit, anyone got a penny?
Side note-Berkshire hathaway is planning to soak up as many shares are available.
I'm curious, where did you hear/see this?
O.k. Here is the big question. How much would it now cost MS to buy Google? And will they?
Thank goodness Google isn't in Russia, then I'd have to ask. Would Google be buying MS?
I just wonder how long they were planning gmail and if it's purely an ipo inflation tool.
So we have an industry where it's getting easier to compete. At some point, it will be relatively cheap to do exactly what google is doing right now.
So who will come out on top? You need to attract people to your service with new innovation. Or if you are microsoft, you make your site default in your operating system.
The battle will no longer be about simply finding information, but what you do with it, and related services. It will be only harder to compete in that industry.
Gipo in keeping with the Gmail format? Sounds kinda like hippo too, I kinda like that.
CVSLK
free ipod and free gmail!
Microsoft will own the search market and yahoo and google will merge and form Yahoogle.
Although the creators are going to become billionaires, I feel bad for the people who work at Google, because with an IPO comes investors, and a corporate atmosphere. Basically, I see an end to the days of lounging around on bean bag chairs and playing arcade games for the employees. You usually can't do that stuff when investors are involved.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
I used my BASIC skillz to make a rocketship scroll up the screen. then we watched the Challenger accident on TV and our programs got a little more interesting...
Please visit the following link.
public H-1B database
It enables you to find the number of H-1B employees employed at certain companies. Through some research on the Internet, I determined the H-1B composition of the following companies that plan to file for an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
15% Google (150 H-1B workers out of 1000) 24% Atheros Communications (24 H-1B workers out of 100)
The above data for H-1B workers pertains to persons who are currently in H-1B status. The number of employees for Atheros is estimated to be 100. Note that the percentages range from 15% to 24%.
If we include the number of former H-1B workers (now converted to American permanent residence and the like), we can safely say that the percentages are doubled, ranging from 30% to 48%. Is anyone bothered by these numbers?
Hundreds of thousands of American citizens lost their jobs in the tech sector, and these 3 companies claim that they cannot find just 350 workers to meet their needs. So, they sought out H-1B workers.
I urge you, my fellow Americans, to boycott the impending IPOs of Atheros and Google. When your fellow citizen was out of work for 2 years during the tech depression, these companies sought foreign workers to fill their ranks.
Do not participate in the IPOs of these companies. Do not financially reward companies that put the screws to American workers. If Atheros and Google want to have an IPO, they should relocate to Asia or another foreign country for the IPO. Those foreign countries have workers with the supposed right set of skills for Atheros and Google.
Before the following happens:
- SCO files an anti-Linux suit against Google
- MS buys a crapwad of stock in Google and becomes a major power
Of course, maybe two hours is being generous.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Instant Billionaires in 5....4....3....2....
I said mod this up, not down you dumb fucking POS linux loving communists.
Side note-Berkshire hathaway is planning to soak up as many shares are available. Woah. This should not just be a "side note". Are you sure about this, and where did you find this out?
Gardeners have been growing plants in greenhouses and flowerbeds for years; why shouldn't a businessman grow a business?
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
The Mountain View-based company earned 4.67 billion rupees, or 18 rupees per share, on revenue of 42.6 billion rupees last year. Google got off to a fast start this year, with a first-quarter profit of 2.83 billion rupees, or 10.6 rupees per share -- more than doubling its earnings of 1.14 billion rupees, or 4.4 rupees per share, at the same time last year.
To Alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Unbelievable. Equating private ownership with communism! The stock market in its pure form is to have a ready market for shares in companies so investors can be confident they can buy into a company and not be locked in as one would it the company was privately held. As the owners have stated as much in their filing, they have enough cash and definitely don't need investors. This makes the IPO unnecessary.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
See other posts... Google's IPO is going to be Dutch Auction style, not "buddies of the investment bank" style. This will be done on the internet, and anyone can particpate.
More details are here
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
I think being run by stockholders won't make google any more evil, it will just make google less of a long term thinker. A current stock holder doesn't care if a course of action kills the company in the long run as long as it drives up the stock price in the short term so they can sell high. There will be more gimmicky things added for short term gain once ownership stakes in google become more liquid.
This is probably a good time to create/invest in high quality pre-ipo google competitors who's long term thinking will eventually eat google's lunch once they start squandering their prowess on gimmicky stock pumping schemes.
Eat at Joe's.
From the S-1:
We expect to use the net proceeds received by us from this offering for general corporate purposes, including:
Although we may use a portion of the net proceeds to acquire businesses, technologies or other assets, we have no current agreements or commitments with respect to any material acquisitions.
Pending such uses, we plan to invest the net proceeds in short-term, investment grade securities.
First off, let's get something straight. Buying common stock on the open market is not investing. It's speculating. The investing occurred when money was given directly to the company for use in its operations by the VC's and by the Syndicates that bought the common stock and sold it into the open market. Those were investors. They drove the company and created its stable value. You and I buy a tiny chit representing something we have no effective control over which will probably never pay off in hard compensation but may, if we're very lucky, pay a few shekels in dividends and get traded in for the speculative paper of some company that wants to actually own this one.
On the other hand, get a load of the Summary Consolidated Financial Data. Not only is Google booming, it never even skipped a stitch through the "downturn". This is the strongest book I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of these things (because I'm a savvy speculator, see).
So, what's going to happen? I'll tell you: you'll never see the stock hit the street.
Prior art: BajaFresh Mexican Cantina filed for an IPO a couple of years ago. We all love BFMC, and I'd even called their headquarters a couple of years before begging them to take my money and give me a piece of the action. Between the time they filed with the SEC and the putative issue date, they were bought lock, stock, and tortillas by Wendy's.
That's how things work. If the company is profitable enough, it's foolish to allow it to be publicly traded. Better to own it privately and pocket the profits in your personal account, or to own it as a subsidiary and use its profitability to cover for your flagging businesses.
So y'all can forget about buying that one share of everyone's favorite search engine and pinning it to your cork-board. This will be inhaled by IBM or Sun or someone with a bottom line to shore up.
how much they earn from the ipo is determined by how many shares of its own the company itself is going to sell, times the selling price of course. that's the $2.7B. the $20B is the estimated market cap after going public, which is total number of shares outstanding times current selling price.
Yeah, except now I know what's going to happen this time. I'm gonna buy me some boo.com stock and get rich quick... Eat my dust suckers...!
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Regardless of how we think Google might change as a result of going public, I think we should at the very least all celebrate the facts that 1) A good tech company can survive, thrive, and even get investor funding in the post dot com bomb world and 2)the creators and employees of Google are finally getting their just rewards. Yeah, they're going to make a boatload of money and that, of itself, is a very cool thing.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Google also filed a form 10-12G today. This should be read in concert with the S-1.
bob wyman
CTO, PubSub Concepts, Inc.
http://pubsub.com
in spite of all the talk about their being forced by circumstances to do the ipo now, it *could* be that we're in a period right now (say until 2005) where they're generating peak revenues. competition from yahoo, and what one would expect to be cutthroat competition from microsoft can seriously hurt here. anyway, we'll see.
but i'd also suspect that everyone's thoughts on how it will skyrocket out of the gate and then come back to earth might also be wrong: much of that behavior in 2000 was due to laddering, which is now illegal. there isn't a whole lot that folks are going to know about google a week after the ipo that they don't already know they day before the ipo. the only difference will be how it trades; and to drive it up high, you're going to need some big speculators to come in.
truly an inspiration for a movie that would knock startup.com off it's pedestal. I've got your marketing done baby - let's get this thing in the can and get the DVD residuals negotiated:
http://www.balloonpop.com/siliconvalley2_2.gif
Call me, let's do lunch, I swear I didn't know it was a hooker from West Hollywood...
It would appear that one needs a brokerage account with one of the underwriters in order to buy in the IPO.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Check out this story about Google. "The Economist" advises against buying shares of Google because it is a loser.
Then Bill Gates gets to own Google....
...ah, a man can dream...
Has anybody stopped to consider the opposite? I mean, on an NPR report earlier this week some of the numbers I heard tossed around were that this IPO could net Google upwards of $20 billion. But this is google we are talking about. Everybody and their grandmother uses google. Everybody. Google gets so much of what they do right. Let's just play make believe, just for a moment, and imagine what would happen if the bidding gets fast and furious. What would happen if, instead of $20 billion, somehow the IPO gets out of control and raises $200 billion? (We are playing make believe, remember.) Microsoft currently has a market capitalization of around $300 billion... In this imaginary world, wouldn't it be possible for this new, cash-bloated-Google-with-teeth to make a bid for Microsoft...?
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
I thought that in slash someone eventually would say.
It is possible to beat google.
Beacause.
It is possible to beat google.
Dont ask how.
If you are over 20 years old, it is very unlikely you will ever again witness a bubble of the magnitude of the one a few years ago. Many of those who lived through 1929 kept waiting for another bubble to appear, but the problem with bubbles, is that they give just enough people wisdom that critical mass fails to develop again. Until of course, those people die off.
By the way, world wars work the same way -- not too comforting that the number who fought in WWII and are still alive today is shrinking rapidly.
so you're saying that eveyone from WWI died off to precipitate WWII? (including HITLER?)
You're a looney.
I sat through a PubSub.com investor presentation. They very much want to be the "Google of Now". It's always a red-flag for me when a company wants money to be somebody else. The poster plugs PubSub.com in the same breath as Google -- cute.
I haven't read the full thing but can anyone tell me what will google use this $2.7 billion for ?
I mean they already have 100,000 servers!
I am thinking about putting a small sum, like $100 or so, into the company. Hopefully it will pay off. The people who run Google are brilliant and innovative people. I am pretty sure they have big plans for the future of Google.
I think Larry & Sergey are quite naive, but that leaves them open to new ideas. I'll feel a bit sorry for them when Eric screws them out of the company.
Good luck to em.
Yay me!
Microsoft is about to integrate and advanced search engine integrated with Windows. This is aimed at competing strongly with Google, pretty much the way they integrated IE to Windows to beat Netscape.
Google developped an advanced robust Operating System that they use on their servers. With the money of the IPO, they'll be able to release it for public and compete with Microsoft.
No doubt the GoogleOS is better than Windows, very light, easy to use, very stable and compatible with Windows.
I was reading the other day about who made early investment in Google. I was surprised to find out that an guy from India (who is also on board of direcors) named Ram Shriram was one of the early investors. His firm sherpalo's website says "...having been integral to helping build some of the foremost online companies, including Netscape, Amazon, and Google.com.
Forbes magazine also has an article on the early investor's in Google
I'm not surprised by the media-focus, but what troubles me is that no one seems to talk much about the research black hole Google is creating. Google has hired a large number of first rate research and technical people, and the unspoken agreement there seems to be that none of these people publish once they start work.
This is not just in the area of information retrieval/web search. There are people in distributed computing, algorithms, programming languages, natural language processing etc. who join Google, and are effectively lost.
For example, look up Krishna Bharat or Anurag Acharya or Vibhu Mittal on Citeseer - virtually no papers published (almost), after they join Google. Google lists a bunch of papers authored by Google people at http://labs.google.com/papers.html -- but at least in many areas I know there's a black hole of papers by people since they've joined. Other companies (IBM, M$, Yahoo) hire people into research but their groups publish a fair amount... [heck, ACM SIGIR 2004 even has a significant # of papers from MS research].
I worry what the long term implications of this loss are to academia. Does it matter? Will this change computer science research and education in any way? Either way, I can't see the IPO helping.
It would seem that people didn't learn anything from the whole dot.com.bomb. Going public is probably the worst thing Google could do. Here come the sharks now.
It was nice while it lasted.
you nitwits
Irrational exuberance in . . . .
5 . .
4 . .
3 . .
2 . .
1
Read any good sonnets lately?
You are absolutely right -- this IPO is a swindle. From page 31 of the prospectus (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0
I thought that the whole POINT of the SEC was to prevent corruption and swindles of the common man. Hence, the laws against INSIDER TRADING that unfairly benefit the insiders are forbidden in order to protect the public.
The whole POINT of a public company is to give control of the company to the shareholders.
Does a lawsuit have to be raised to prevent this IPO from happening?
Typical salary 200k? Tell me where you live, I'm coming down.
I'd be more willing to accept that only 20% of the people are technical, another 20% are executives and management, and the rest are lower paid clerics, administrative, and help desk people making siginificantly less.
Even after you factor in the +'s I'm sure the majority of the company falls well short of the 100K mark.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I start with Google this summer after I grauduate - does an IPO now mean I'm SOL with regard to making a google dollars? The opportunity to work with a bunch of really smart people on a really cool problem (to me it's massive clusters, not search) but some pre-ipo shares would have been nice too.
Well, maybe not *anyone*. From the SEC filing:
We have not undertaken any efforts to qualify this offering for offers to individual investors in any jurisdiction outside the U.S. Therefore, individual investors located outside the U.S. should not expect to be eligible to participate in this offering.
These guys are true geeks. The total value of $2,718,281,828 just happens to be e, or natural logarithm fame. Strangely funny. I wonder if any other companies have used interesting valuations.
they have become greedy... we should boycott them by blocking their ads... there are lots of tools in the market that can block google's ads... like the 550access.com toolbar and Intermute's ad blocker. Maybe Microsoft should just build Google ad-blocking technology into their browser and kill Google.
Did I say a salary of $200k?
No... I said "cost of $100-200k per employee (salary + rent + computer + etc...)"
That's salary + office rent + computer hardware + computer software + health benefits + taxes + stock plan + 401k / RRSP + relocation + training + desk + chair + office supplies + phone bill + internet cost + everything else.
I was using a rough employee cost of 2x a typical salary of $50-100k. That 2x comes from what I understand from management at a large company at which I worked. If you want a web link to some other references, here ya go:
2.2x salary for a (use the 1.25x * 1.75x figures)
How much does an employee really cost?
Dave
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
Okay but I still don't think you're thinking real world here man. You've been making too much money for too long? Not that I don't agree that an employee costs more then their salary alone, but c'mon.
Typical salary is more like 25-35k for clerical and data entry type positions. These positions generally greatly out number high salary ones. However, I don't know the internal google organization, but neither do you..
You're approaching "total cost of business" with that rap sheet.
A large company you worked for must have wasted a lot of money or used gold plated keyboards, because I'll be damned if I've EVER cost a company twice my salary ever; taking into account even pens and pencils there's just no way.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Look at their balance sheet, p.3, on the SEC link in the article.
Take the 2003 column, add up the Costs and Expenses section, minus the Cost of Revenues, then divide by the number of employees (1907).
This gives $261k per employee.
If you want proof that I added the correct numbers, look at the filing, p.42-46, and you'll see that those items are primarily the employee salaries and other employee costs. There are other non-employee costs in the Sales and marketing section, such as advertising and promotional expenditures, but they are not listed as primary items. A portion of the Cost of Revenues could be arguably included as well, but I wasn't sure of the split between the cost of their data centers, and the labor associated with their operation. Therefore, I did not include them. The non-inclusion of the labor costs here would help offset the inclusion of the non-primary items in the Sales and marketing category above.
You can also do the same thing for the first quarter of 2004 (see balance sheet), extrapolating to $380k per employee for the year. Note that on p.39, the headcount is 1907 as of March 31, 2004.
Therefore, $380,000 per employee is a more accurate figure.
Google is not likely the type of company where clerical and data-entry people outnumber the engineers / computer scientists.
Oh yeah, add in the full Cost of Revenues number and you'll get the "total cost of business" you were talking about.
Dave
FPGA, Wireless, ASIC, Verilog, VHDL, HW, 10yr exp, Team Lead, Ottawa (More? Email above. slashdotusername=dgmartin98 )
If you had had a PubSub.com SEC Edgar subscription, you would have been one of the first to see this filing.
On the other hand, if you happened to be a developer on EDGAR *grin*, you would have known about this about the same time it happened. We just released an update (version 8.7) last weekend which allows companies to create their accounts online (yeah, yeah, we're behind the times...welcome to the US government). Google ("Google Inc.", as registered with EDGAR) created their CIK (company ID, essentially) around 10:30 yesterday morning, then filed early afternoon. It was pretty fun to watch.
--trb
"A person who becomes immensely rich off an IPO." Literally it should be 1 followed by a hundred zeros, but more reallistically about ten zeros.
I think you're wrong. I agree with the other dude...in high tech circles, $100K salary is farily "middle of the road". Sure, secretaries, IT folks, etc. probably don't make that much, but thats about the going rate for a senior software designer. Never mind what the managers, architects, directors, sales/marketing guys, executives, etc. make.
Once you spread the cost of the overhead across your employee base, plus add in the all the expenses of benefits / insurance, training, etc. you're going to come close to his figures.
And you can compare the pay with other US companies. Other companies can learn from google here.
I tend to agree with you that corporate executives are overpaid. In this case, however, I expect that all three were taking limited (although still substantial) compensation with the understanding that they would all become filthy, filthy rich once the IPO hit.
What is your source on the Warren Buffett info? It would seem to serve as a pretty definitive refutation to the "this IPO is a sham" claims above, but seems unlikely due to his general avoidance of technology shares.
They're going to kluge it up with advertising and ruin the objective search rankings. The reason is that it will make more money in the short term that way. This can be resisted for a while but once the stock starts taking that is exacly what will happen. Then another company will come along with a stripped down search engine that works really fast and gives you what you're looking for and the process will start all over again.
"Sure, secretaries, IT folks, etc. probably don't make that much,"
PROBABLY?
"but thats about the going rate for a senior software designer"
And how many of the 18,000 people supposedly employed at Google fit into this category?
I didn't say that some people don't make big bucks, but to assume that every one of the 18k employees is going to make between 50k and 150k you live in another world.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
My .02 worth of /. flaimbait: Your moronity most likely stems from the lack of education about operations management. And yet you keep arguing.
dividends are important, but thats not how you make money in stocks. Mr. an_mo's got it right: its about your share in the company.
-ashot
18000? Why don't you back that up, all the other estimates I'm seeing say it's closer to 1900.
Keep in mind, if the top one percent of a company makes $1 million, the bottom 40% can make $30,000 the average of the two groups is over $50k.
I suggest you either stop trolling, or learn to read. Come on, 18000?