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Google IPO Open for Registration
Jon Shoberg writes "Google IPO is open for bid registration. From the front page: 'A registration statement relating to Google's Class A common stock has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. Google's Class A common stock may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This communication shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of Google's Class A common stock in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state. No offer to buy shares of Google's Class A common stock can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the registration statement has become effective, and any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time until the notice of acceptance is sent after the effective date. Of the shares to be sold in Google's initial public offering of Class A common stock, 14,142,135 shares will be issued and sold by Google and 10,494,524 of the shares will be sold by the selling stockholders.'"
A convoluted advertisement for the upcoming IPO... of which I will probably not be able to afford - even *with* the Dutch Auction.
meh
Means... "you're poor, they're rich". duh
He goes to great lengths to say it's a solicitation, when it's pretty close to being an advertisement.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
If you add those two numbers together, the number you get is 24,636,659 ... which happens to be prime.
With all the hype surrounding this IPO it is sure to drive in some individual investors who would otherwise not commit themselves to such a high level of risk.
This is one of the rare times when an indivudal without millions in worth will have the opprunity to purchase shares from a company's public offering.
In my opinion any individual who purchases these shares is not doing themselves any favor. What is the goal behind buying any? Priced between 108-135 the odds of GOOG appreciating in value anytime soon after the IPO are slim.
Even in their SEC filings they admit in the risks section that they face increasingly greater compettition. They are not immune anymore and I would not want to myself to buy any of these shares nor would I like any family members.
Here's some information on how an IPO works. As for what google means, that's just silly.
Thanks to google, I finally know what a U.S. Person is!
Who knew a "branch of a foreign entity located in the United States" counted?
OK, so 2,4636,659 shares * $135.00USD = $3,325,948,965USD
Is it just me, or are we back in the dot com shenanigans?
Google. 3 *billion* USD. Not worth it (to me at least).
Then again, I'm just a lowly engineer.
Why not more shares and lower price so those of us who *made* Google what it is could have had at least one share?
Sigh.
Mind the gap...
"... of which I will probably not be able to afford - even *with* the Dutch Auction."
... or maybe even less.
Wait a couple of years. It's not totally unlikely that you could buy it for, say, $4/share in 2 years
I, being a Canadian, would be interested in buying 1 stock. Just for saying I owe approx. 1/14000000th of half of google. But because I am not a U.S. Person, I am stuck owning a small portion of Nortel stock and a little of Air Canada. (canadians would know why I'm kinda bitter about those)
Yarr.
while(1) { fork(); };
What are we to think of Google now that they are becoming a publicly traded for-profit corporate conglomerate? Instead of serving the anti-establishment community, they have become the establishment, serving only rich white guys with stock prices out of reach of the common man! They have become everything that Slashdot hates!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
What does a search engine need with $3.3 billion other than $$$ for the board members? I love google as much as anyone but I won't be buying their stock....unless it is in a mutual fund or stock index fund.....
I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for some Google stock today!
Ok, cross everything you have two of. This could be REAL good, or REAL bad for the tech sector. I, like many others, lost my ASS on Palm when they IPO'd. I only wish I'd have waited a DAY, instead of buying immediately. My $2,000 got me a whopping 11 shares, that turned into 1.1 shares 6mos later when they had a 1-for-10 split. Now it's worthless...
Lesson learned...
My
Google could buy a 10% stake in Yahoo. Now that would be fun to watch
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
When the share price falls can we get the folk suing RedHat to start a class action suit against Google too? After all, these tech sahres are only supposed to go upwards are they not?
They are making money.
They do have a stranglehold on the market.
The geeks will still be in charge, The Dutch Auction proves it. I'm sure we've read all the article from Wall Street moaning about how they are getting treated like a B*tch by Google.
We only have to worry if we see the Google-Bowl or a SuperBowl TV Ad.
User Friendly found this out
--Chag
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Canadians can buy any stock they want from any country. You can even have some international stocks in your RRSP. The US pushed for years to make sure that Americans could buy anybody else's companies. Of course the rules work in both directions and sometimes Uncle Sam finds that annoying.
There are exceptions. Air Canada for instance. There is a rule that says that 51% of its stock has to be owned by Canadians. The same rule applies to ownership of Canadian media. Of course in the quantities that you and I can buy stocks, such rules don't affect us.
Keep in mind that Google has additional avenues of business available to them. Not only have they built some phenominal search technology, but they have also demonstrated the versatility of Linux and the GooOS at maintaining a vast sea of computing hardware.
In the future it may be a Google-inspired operating system that we run for our enterprise computing tasks. The Google Search Appliance is a targeted business to test the culmination of this technology as a consumer product.
Time will tell, but I suspect this is a more robust company than the dot-bombs of the mid 90's. As always, skip the IPO and pickup stock after the initial boom cycle has given way to bust. Don't forget to read the prospectus and do the math to figure out what the company is *really* worth.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
Google issuing multiple types of shares is very lame. I'm neither interested in buying the company nor do I have the money, but having common shares with very little voting power, while having another voting class that is held by the insiders is old school. It's very unusual in the tech industry and it is very elitist.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
...I just checked my washing label and I'm not a 'U.S. Person' :-(
I'm Australian, so I could be way off base
Let me help you out (btw, how's winter this year?):
I don't think Google are floating to raise capital, which was the original reason to float a company.
Nope. Lots of companies are subject to the filing requirement and stay private; although you still have to file, you're not subject to an ungodly number of corporate regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, not to mention intense accounting scrutiny. Corporate governance insurance is also much, much cheaper, keeping overhead down for the (existing) investors. There are even companies that are "going private" to avoid the hassle - see Cox's annoucement today, for example.
As I understand it (and I could be wrong), the co-founders of Google were under intense scrutiny by Mike Moritz at Sequoia and John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins - their VCs - to take the company public. You see, these VC firms vie for the title of "greatest ROI" - and in order for these guys to shop around the "we're #1! we got a 30,000% return on our GOOG investment!" claim to the pension funds, they need the company to list.
Once Google goes public, employees will cash out and leave (see: Netscape) - which is why the co-founders really didn't want to go ahead with this, but basically have no choice. It also adds undue scrutiny on them - sure, they're worth $8B in paper worth, but in reality it's a lot better to make $100m a year in cold hard cash while maintaining a low profile; that way you don't have to worry about getting kidnapped while vacationing in St. Tropez.
The only people who will benefit from this move are the VCs.
Microsoft didn't float to raise capital either. The problem they had, which is why they were forced to float, was an informal "stock market" sprung up within the company. This is either illegal or frowned upon by the US business regulators.
Nope. Gates probably took the company public due to 1) youthful vanity (no other way to gain the title of "world's richest man" - which, by the way, is a lie (see, for example, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who spends $8m a day in expenses - $3B a year)); 2) extreme harassment from greedy investment bankers / existing shareholders. Gates obviously learned that it was a mistake, as he is on record saying that one of his greatest regrets was taking MSFT public.
Lots of employee-owned companies have "internal stock markets." If I remember correctly, SAIC is a good example.
In conclusion - my advice to all budding entrepreneurs is this - money is only useful when you can do something with it. When everyone knows you've got money, suddenly you are restricted in your options, as you are being scrutinized. Come up with something that people want to buy, sell it to them, make a lot of money, and shut up. The less your competitors and the general public know about you, the less complicated your life is - and the safer you are.
Oh yeah, and never take VC.