Google Slashes IPO price

Hungry Student writes "In breaking news, Reuters and the BBC are reporting that Google has reduced the price of its IPO to between $85 and $95 per share from $108 to $135 per share. Google shareholders are also reducing the number of shares available for sale by 6.1m to 5.5m. The total number of shares available is currently 14.1m."

Comments

Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[stecoop]

The initial price per share for Google stocks has been lowered to $85-$95 down from speculative high of $130. This will create a market capital less than $26 billion down from $36 billion. Noted that the confounders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, disclosed that they intended to sell 1 million shares each but will now sell 480,000 shares in the range of $90 per share valued at about $43 Million. In addition, the pre-ipo market will get 5.5 Million shares, half the originally anticipated. View the Complete prospectus.

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[LostCluster]

View the Complete prospectus.

Remember, as with all investments, past search results are no guarantee of the quality of future returns.

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[ballpoint]

I guess you've just made a typo, but I guess you could call Sergey and Larry 'confounders':

http://www.google.com/search?q=definition+confound er

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[swordboy]

All this means is that the FUD campaign worked. All those whiners writing for Forbes and the WSJ got their way - they can get into the company for less than it is really worth so that they can turn around and sell at a tidy profit in only a few days. This is the way that all IPOs are - the rich get richer. Shame on google for trying to change that...

10:1 odds that the shares trade back to where they were supposed (UP!) to be after they are public.

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[R.Caley]

10:1 odds that the shares trade back to where they were supposed (UP!) to be after they are public.

If you really believe this, what are you whinging about? You will make a mint.

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[avdp]

Do you really believe that a company like Google is worth $100+ a share? No offense to Google - I love their search engine and gmail - and it is a profitable company, but really look at their business model and tell me that it's worth tens of billions in market capitalization. If you think so you're out of your mind. Anyone getting in at those level are hoping for a short term increase (right after the IPO) to make some cash. Long term, that price has only one place to go: down.

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[Anonymous Coward]

Inside stories: http:://www.yes333.com/?r=linux

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[mcc]

but really look at their business model and tell me that it's worth tens of billions in market capitalization

The initial market capitalization at that $100+ stock price (I.E. price of stock * stock in circulation) was about a billion dollars less than Yahoo's current capitalization.

Put that way, it doesn't sound quite so unreasonable.

Of course it was also about three times as much as Apple's current capitalization...

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really believe that a company like Google is worth $100+ a share?
-----

That depends on how many shares they issue. Think about it--suppose they only issued 1 share and it cost $100. You'd have 100% ownership of Google for $100. Now, that's obviously not going to happen, but it points out why you have to look at more than just the share price.

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[azaris]

The initial market capitalization at that $100+ stock price (I.E. price of stock * stock in circulation) was about a billion dollars less than Yahoo's current capitalization.

That makes as much sense in valuing the stock as saying that since 'Google' has six letters and 'Yahoo' only had five, then Google is better value for your money. If Google were selling one share for $1,000,000, would you think it's a great deal?

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[avdp]

Right. I am going by the current numbers of shares they've putting out.

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[avdp]

Who says Yahoo is worth its market capitalization either? But regardless, Yahoo is a different company. The only thing they really have in common is they are both internet stocks. What I am asking is to look at Google, its business model, the numbers they've published (for revenue, etc) and make the determination based on that. Those are the only numbers a smart investor will consider. Any other consideration is just gambling.

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[R.Caley]

Of course it was also about three times as much as Apple's current capitalization...

The BBC have been using Sony and McDonalds as comparison point.

Which would you choose if Old Nick popped up and offered you a choice of owning Google or Sony?

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[Anonymous Coward]

How could this be marked insightful? sigh!

Read my lips: share price is meaningless.
Market cap is what matters.

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[mcc]

I don't get what you're trying to say. I'm saying that if you look not at the individual stock share prices, but at the overall valuation of the company created by the total amount of Google stock that will exist post-IPO, you get an overall value about comparable to the overall value of Yahoo. Since Yahoo provides similar services to Google, has similar potential growth paths, and is probably Google's nearest direct competitor, then it would not be unreasonable to suspect the market would find it acceptable for Google to have an overall value as a company comparable to that of Yahoo.

If Google were selling one share for $1,000,000, would you think it's a great deal?

Uh, if you could buy a 100% share in Google for $1,000,000? Um, yes that would be a great deal!

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[Snaller]

Right, because a superior product that makes money is nothing to make money off... wait..

Re:Pre-IPO getting less shares owners selling less

[avdp]

Why don't you read my post again? I do talk about market cap.

Exciting day!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now my kidney I just sold can buy me 50 shares! Yes!

Also, Slashdot's 10 millionth post today! Perhaps in this story even! WOW!

Re:Exciting day!

[k98sven]

Lucky bastard. This guy only got 1/10th of that.

(25000 rupees = 540 bucks)

Impossible Valuation

[manmanic]

Who knows whether the new (or old) price is a good one? It's practically impossible to put a number on Google's future profitability. There are simply far too many unknowns:

• What kind of growth rate will Google see from the Adsense and Adwords advertising networks?
• How many millions of people will use Gmail once it finally goes live?
• What effect will the built-in search in Microsoft's Longhorn have on Google's traffic?
• How much will Google make reselling search to 3rd parties such as Google Alert?

Future successes in any of these businesses could make Google's current price seriously undervalued. And if some key ones fall through, it will have been far too high.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[datbox]

"What effect will the built-in search [searchenginewatch.com] in Microsoft's Longhorn [microsoft.com] have on Google's traffic?"

Agreed. I think we are going to be getting to a point where the majority of the desktop users will stop going to a website to search. They will choose to use integrated solutions in the future. If google can get an app out for the desktop that *integrates* with the desktop, it will be able to battle with the longhorn search feature on it's own playing field.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[markkellman]

The final numbers are going to be determined by the public mood at the time of auction clearing. The recent delays will probably not bode well for that...

After a few weeks, the price should settle at something financially sound.

I do believe that many on Wall Street want this thing to sink. Here's hoping it doesn't.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[MrNonchalant]

This battle Google will lose. Everyone will have Microsoft's app. Only those who choose to download will have Google's app. So long as the user can find stuff with any regularity with Microsoft's creation there won't be any impetus to switch to a marginally better alternative. Nobody lacks appreciation of technological quality like the average PC consumer (IE,AOL,WMP,ETC.).

Re:Impossible Valuation

[TexasDex]

If google can get an app out for the desktop that *integrates* with the desktop, it will be able to battle with the longhorn search feature on it's own playing field.

How about the Google Deskbar?

Very nifty integrated search tool. I loved it (back when I actually used Windows). The only issue here (of course) is that Longhorn will come with the MSN search agent, but people will have to install Google's deskbar app.

coughmonopolycough

Re:Impossible Valuation

[sadcox]

Future successes in any of these businesses could make Google's current price seriously undervalued. And if some key ones fall through, it will have been far too high.

The scariest unanswered question to me is what happens when the next "google" comes along? Tech moves quickly, and traditionally the bigger a company is the slower they move...all of us who work for large firms can attest to that.

I stick to a pretty basic investment philosopy: Invest in a company only if any idiot could run it. Eventually one will.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[Anonymous Coward]

These points apply to about any tech company. Will Longhorn be a success? Will there be mass migration to Linux or MacOS? Will the strong growth of Apple's music business continue or will worthwile competitors emerge? Can Dell continue to grow or will they be undermined by Chinese clones that are not tied to Intel and Microsoft? Yet, none of these considerations prevent MSFT, AAPL, DELL, RHAT from having a market valuation.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[Short Circuit]

The "Next" Google will have to be pretty darn impressive. Google just keeps producing more and more ideas. Check out the "more" link from their main page, or Google Labs. (Google Sets is my personal favorite...)

Re:Impossible Valuation

[hcdejong]

IDK about this. Integrated search engines have been available for several years now, and I don't see them making a huge impact. It's just more convenient to search from the browser's address bar than to open a separate application for it.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[WIAKywbfatw]

Wow, I guess that's why so many foreign investors are so keen to invest in Dubya's America then!

Re:Impossible Valuation

[niteice]

If Google can also get out OS X and Linux versions...that would be interesting.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[NDPTAL85]

No actually it won't since combined hardly anyone uses those two OS's on the desktop.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[Donny Smith]

>How about the Google Deskbar?

I don't know, I use Google Toolbar in all my browsers, but I found Google Deskbar annoying and impractical to use.
If anyone (not only the Big Three) makes a product that's good and integrates well with Linux and Windows, it will quickly climb to the top.
I think there's a lot of space in Internet-Desktop (Office/Email) connectivity.
Microsoft can do a good job in making a deskbar that works well with Hotmail and MS Office, Google can improve theirs, and ANYONE can make one that works fine on both Linux and Windows OS and with OpenOffice.
It's a very open market.

>The only issue here (of course) is that Longhorn will come with the MSN search agent, but people will have to install Google's deskbar app.

That may be true but if the stuff sucks, noone will use it. I tried Yahoo's browser toolbar and uninstalled it, I tried Microsoft's toolbar and did the same. Ten minutes was all I needed to make an informed decision.

>coughmonopolycough

That'd be partially true if Windows was the only OS on the market or if the market was not transparent.
Apart from that, I'd say that the fact that both are free and can be downloaded at will gives sufficient choice to customers.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[jhoffoss]

Add in the fact that, according to a quote in the WSJ this morning, Google has no plans for the $26-36-? Billion it is expected to harvest from this IPO.

I really like Google, as much as the next geek, but I don't know that this would be a sure-fire investment. The cash reserve is reassuring though, that Google could continue to push employees to spend 20% of their time researching & testing new ideas and new solutions.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[mcc]

I think we are going to be getting to a point where the majority of the desktop users will stop going to a website to search. They will choose to use integrated solutions in the future.

Not so sure the desktop users will bite. Mac users have had an excellent meta-search utility built into the desktop since... I think since about 1998 or so. Most of us don't use it. We mostly just use google now. In fact in the end Apple just put a "search google" field in its web browser's button bar.

If I go to Google, it's because I'm looking for webpages. If I am looking at webpages I want to do it in my web browser. It makes more sense to just keep the entire process within the browser than it does to add the unnecessary mental context switch of dropping into my file browser application. And that goes even if your operating system for some reason decides to reuse individual windows between the web browser and file browser so that it can pretend they're the same thing.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[danieljpost]

Two things:

1. Lower price means I can afford more shares, before the price starts going up
2. Fewer shares being sold means that I own a larger percentage of the company, per share I own

Both seem like good news to me :)

Re:Impossible Valuation

[X]

Fewer shares being sold means that I own a larger percentage of the company, per share I own.

Nope, not at all. Shares sold at IPO != Total Shares in the Company. The company still has the same number of shares, so each share still represents the same "share" of the company it did before. There are just going to be fewer of them publicly traded at first.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[X]

It's practically impossible to put a number on Google's future profitability.

Umm... can you name a tech company working on new products where this wouldn't be true? The market finds perfectly good ways to put valuations on this. You can quite easily put a valuation on it by looking at expected revenue and the probability of success.

Future successes in any of these businesses could make Google's current price seriously undervalued.

Sigh... It's investors like you that will probably keep Google's stock too overvalued for me to buy in. If you look at Google's P/E ratio based on it's current valuation, they need to have huge success in almost all of these ventures in order to justify their current valuation.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[mantera]

"What effect will the built-in search in Microsoft's Longhorn have on Google's traffic?"

Unless Microsoft changes its ways it won't matter. Have you seen that newsbot they're making? More than half its stories come from MSNBC! This is a deliberate policy as Microsoft says that the service resides on MSNBC so it will be given a first amongst equals treatment. Technology won't make a difference; people just don't trust Microsoft, and Microsoft keeps proving they're not trustworthy.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[netless]

too bad AOL snapped advertising.com.
That would be an interesting IPO.
In my view their advertising model is far superior (from advertiser pov, ROI wise) than pay per click model.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[TexasDex]

That may be true but if the stuff sucks, noone will use it.

You are forgetting that Microsoft has virtually dominated the browser market by including their arguably inferior browser with Windows. Mozilla FireFox has to be downloaded, and therefore it has a market share in the single digits.

I am also tempted to argue that Windows itself is an inferior product that millions of people use without considering any of the alternatives, because it comes pre-installed. But I know full well Macs and Linux aren't perfect either, so I won't.

Re:Impossible Valuation

[Donny Smith]

> arguably inferior browser with Windows

I think that even on Slashdot most folks would agree that since MS IE 2.0 Microsoft has had the best browser around.

It is also quite well known that this year many people switched to other browsers (I'm writing this in Firefox) because they got fed up with IE security issues. This proves the point that they did not switch before just because the incentive was too low.

> millions of people use without considering any of the alternatives

This has been discussed on Slashdot many times; I believe that most people don't _want_ to consider alternatives because they can get by just fine with whatever comes in in the box they buy. They can't tell the difference. I made an experiment - I tried to get my friend to use Firefox just to see how she will react - she doesn't want to and I think think the reason is really absurd - probably she doesn't like to remember a different icon on her desktop or something like that. To her it's all the same, so why switch?

Where ARE they headed?

[beh]

So - where is google heading now?

Personally, when I saw that google was restricting the share emission to U.S. persons, I got relatively pissed off at them. I didn't intend to buy any shares of them, but to restrict access to the shares seems hardly "fair". I don't know how quickly the US would step in if some well known company abroad would effectively forbid US investors to get any stock from them...

In reaction to this, so far, I've reduced my usage of gmail (intend to drop it completely shortly) and google is now a "fallback" when I need a search engine - vivisimo.com looks more and more appealing everyday. And since google doesn't want non-US-persons to invest in them (at least not for the IPO), my guess is they don't want non-US-business either. And I'll try my best to honor it.

Right now, I'm just curious whether I'm the only one to take such measures, or whether others did so as well.

Re:Where ARE they headed?

[sisukapalli1]

I believe it is definitely not a reflection on Google's attitude towards non U.S. persons. It is most likely some requirement for IPOs for stocks trading on the Nasdaq.

As for me, I don't have gmail, and I think vivisimo will be attractive in about 2 to 3 years. Yahoo and MSN will be biggest challengers to google in the coming years.

S

Re:Where ARE they headed?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they were to want to sell the stock to non-US persons, they would have to go through the registration process (such as it is) in every other country.

If you want to buy shares, set up an account with a US broker, like everyone else does. They will buy it in trust for you. And just so you know, US persons have an extremely difficult time buying shares of foreign companies directly. That's why there are ADRs.

Re:Where ARE they headed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you're the only one. Sorry buddy.

Re:Where ARE they headed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, any chance to piss and moan about the US, they'll take.

Re:Where ARE they headed?

[thelexx]

But...but...it's so much more fun to get all self-righteous and overreact! Why you got to go ruining the man's parade with FACTS?!

Re:Where ARE they headed?

[GoofyBoy]

>And since google doesn't want non-US-persons to invest in them

Considering that the stock is/will be overpriced, you get no voting rights and the company has done some pretty serious mistakes in this IPO, perhaps Google is doing you a favour.

Re:Where ARE they headed?

[Sheepdot]

Actually, this happens a LOT for US IPOs. Sometimes it is even *required by law*.

Re:Where ARE they headed?

[e-gold]

Heh. Funny, and I like your sigfile, too! :)

Anyway, one way of avoiding problems with stock markets is to just roll your own market, like the gold casino did (with very-good results) a bit over a year ago.

Interestingly, their share prices have remained stable at around 100 grams, which was the original IPO price. TGC is said to regularly pay dividends, which have regularly risen as more players find the casino, but it's hard to know much about TGC.
JMR

Good

[kc0re]

I was hoping Google would come off their high horse. They aren't Microsoft, in fact, I don't even think Microsoft stock is running that high (no I didn't check, and no I am not checking). Don't get me wrong, I'd love to own some Google, however, I wasn't paying that much for it.

Re:Good

[evslin]

I just looked. Microsoft's running at 27 right now.

Re:Good

[AliasTheRoot]

Share price is irrelevent, it's the number of shares that exist (either on the market, or held internally) that determine overall value.

(roughly anyway, i'm sure it's more complex than that).

Re:Good

[sadcox]

We were just discussing this at work--the only reason I'd want Google stock would be for the cool factor. (Un)fortunately I don't care enough about cool to buy.

As an investment? No thanks.

Re:Good

[Asprin]

No, that's pretty much it. That's where market capitalization comes in - in simple terms it's the total of all the outstanding shares multiplied by the share price. A sort-of "net value" of the company if you wanted to pay cash for all of it.

One $10 share in a company with a market cap of $1,000 is a greater percentage of ownership than one $100 share in a company with a market cap of $1,000,000.

However, that doesn't change the rules of arithematic. The $100 share is still worth - on its own - 10 times the $10 share.

Re:Good

[mikael]

That's where market capitalization comes in

I thought market capitalization was when Wired used to call the internet "the Internet" and the web "the Web".

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

"Only market cap matters" is largely true, but not as complete an answer as it seems.

Since a stock market is not a perfect abstract universe, numbers operate within ranges. So absolute stock prices do matter, in subtle ways. For example, shares in a market are generally traded in minimum batches, such as 100 or 300. If you try to trade in smaller batches, your liquidity goes down since your broker needs to match your shares with somebody else's (at the same price!) in order to make a sale (or buy). Private investers tend not to want to put much more than a few thousand dollars in a single trade, ergo "few thousand" divided by "hundred or so" leads to a reasonable stock price that's in the tens of dollars.

Similarly, trade fees are generally set to a fixed amount per trade (say, $7), and not related to dollar amount. Thus, transaction costs in percentage relates to absolute stock price as well, by way of minimum batch.

Furthermore, market legal contracts limits how far down prices can go. Thus a "penny stock" is generally a stock below $5, and below certain limits, such as $1, a stock risks being delisted.

More subtly, stocks are tracked in certain minimum increments. Modern stock markets have gone decimal, but one penny out of $5 is obviously much more than one penny out of $100 (to be precise, 20 times more). Thus the percentage increments that a stock moves depends on it's absolute level. This also affects liquidity in complex ways since the ability to do arbitrage relates to relative resolution of these price moves.

Etc etc. So yeah, "market cap is all that matters". But don't feel too smug when you say that.

Correlation?

[StevenHenderson]

From the article:

"The company may face fines if the SEC finds that the share issue was contrary to stock market regulations."

How much is this tied to the decrease in price? Also, did the interview with Playboy have the negative effect analysts anticipated?

Re:Correlation?

[Anonymous Coward]

"did the interview with Playboy have the negative effect analysts anticipated?"

Only if they showed off their beowulf cluster to the playboy bunnies.

Re:Correlation?

[TopShelf]

How much is this tied to the decrease in price? Also, did the interview with Playboy have the negative effect analysts anticipated?

The answers would be very little and no. The Playboy interview, if it indeed violated SEC rules (which is in doubt) would likely result in a modest one-time fine. Investors (not speculators) are more concerned with earnings growth over time.

Re:Correlation?

[Izeickl]

"Google continues to insist it does not believe the interview, conducted after the company announced plans for the IPO, was a violation of securities law, and it said it would fight any such finding by courts. But it does list the article as a risk factor for the IPO that could force it to repurchase shares from investors, the same boilerplate warning it gave in an SEC filing Friday." http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/18/technology/googlep rice/index.htm That will be a hefty chunk of change if they have to buy back all previously issued stock at the IPO price.

Re:Correlation?

[bcrowell]

I think maybe the real reason for the sudden drop was that people didn't think Brin and Page looked that good in the centerfold.

If we all knew, we wouldn't be predicting

[LostCluster]

At this hour, nobody really knows how much Google as a whole is worth. That's the whole point of this Dutch Auction system that hasn't quite finished being played out yet.

Once Google's on the market, we'll be able to multiply the share price by shares outstanding to get a "market cap" number that'll be an approximation of Google's total value... but clearly an indicator that'll be bouncing that fast can't tell us too much info perfectly either.

Sure, we'd all want this to be simple, but nothing ever is on Wall Street.

Re:If we all knew, we wouldn't be predicting

[qmchenry]

I'm conflicted about Google going public. On the one hand, it will provide vital data in my nonsanctioned research about how concern for shareholder confidence destroys good companies, while, on the other foot, Google's new concern for shareholder confidence could, well, you know. I think going public causes a company's principle focus to shift from what would be good and profitable for the company to what shareholders think would be good and profitable for shareholders. I believe the two are typically mutually exclusive.

Are IPOs becoming like Hollywood where the take during the first weekend of a new movie is the sole measure of it's success? That means lots of good movies aren't made because they won't top that list and movies that are made are done so to optimize their profitability, not their cinematic quality.

Re:If we all knew, we wouldn't be predicting

[MrHops]

That is why the two "confounders" are retaining a controlling percentage of the voting stock. It makes it easier to do what's good for the company without worrying too much about what today's shareholders want.

Re:If we all knew, we wouldn't be predicting

[iabervon]

Google doesn't seem to me to have any concern for shareholder confidence. I mean, their prospectus practically says, "We don't care what you investors think. We're going to run the company however we feel like, and you can kindly take your investment elsewhere if you aren't comfortable with that."

Re:If we all knew, we wouldn't be predicting

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is actually stating the obvious, look at how few board fights are won by the interloper (even if they are billionares). But it is a truth that no one likes to think about very often. Good on Google for rubbing investors nose in it, it's not like the need the money.

Re:If we all knew, we wouldn't be predicting

[qmchenry]

That's a great sentiment and I hope they stay true to that course. The biggest problem for them will be maintaining their ideals years from now when there are other factors (shareholder concerns) seeking to find a new equilibrium in their business decisions.

Take Wal-Mart as an example. Sam Walton was a good man and his values were reflected in the company's business practices in the beginning, I believe. I think he'd be glad he was dead if he was alive today to see the way things are going now. Hiring known illegal immigrants? Knocking off long-term associates by the dozens at stores to maintain their $7 billion/year profit margin? A third of their associates unable to afford health insurance? I'm probably acutely naive to think this is predominantly due to shareholder concerns -- I'm sure some good ol' fashioned greed plays into it, too.

Years ago I used Yahoo as my primary search engine until that one day I got an advertisement popped up in a window when I did a search and I switched Google. Anyway, I just hope I don't have to find a new search engine again.

The next fall...

[Phoenix-IT]

Here we go dot-com boom #2, I'll be getting off now... Perhaps I'll become a nurse, before they outsource it.

Bad timing..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I'd love to of owned just 1 share in google but I've never used the stock market, I don't have a clue how it works and I really don't know how to get the info I need before they will all be gone (knowing my luck).

Who wouldn't have loved to say "I own part of google"? Damn Doom 3 making me upgrade my PC or I would of looked into buying a share (just 1, it's enough to become a major geek me thinks).

Re:Bad timing..

[tehcyder]

If it means that much to you, just wait until after the IPO when the share price has fallen to a more sensible level and buy a few then.

Re:Bad timing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it'll eventually show up as an option at OneShare.com.

Re:Bad timing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ask your parents to buy a share for you. Maybe they know how to do it.

Re:Bad timing..

[peter303]

You just open an account with a stockbroker on the web. Low volume traders will have to pay a commission of $20 - $30 per trade. Generally commissions are the same whether buying one share to or an "even lot" of 100 shares. People tend to trade in 100s to minimize commissions. High volume and/or high account balance traders can get commissions below $10 at some brokerages.

Re:Bad timing..

[one-of-many]

Owning just one share of one company is very expensive because of trading account fees. You could do two thinks: get a relative with an account to buy one share for you (I think you can even get the actual stock certificate sent to you - super geeky) or possibly the company may set up a direct purchase plan like a DRIP.

Re:Bad timing..

[neds_dead]

Here is how it works and even more so in the Google ipo. The employeees and friends will get rich and you will try to make a little money. Quess what? Employees can sell thier shares the first day of the ipo? translation: NO lock-up period , they can dump their shares on investors by the millions causing the stock to decline. Google employees own more that 50% of shares outstanding: translation; you have no voting power in the company. You realise that Google has offered $3.00 for each share they illegally issued to their employees. But wait, the stock price is supposed to $100. :) Too many more problems to mention and Google should have just stayed private. Greed is really powerful! PS. Who would buy shares in the piece-of-shit ipo offering? Many will, but the only people that are garenteed to become rich are employees and friends. period! PSS. It is ok to be niave and idealistic, but reality and greed will often stomp all over those notions.

1/2 share

[minotaurcomputing]

Uhhh, is it possible to buy half of a share? That seems to be all that I can afford.

Re:1/2 share

[Anonymous Coward]

sure: BuyandHold.com

Re:1/2 share

[LostCluster]

You can't directly buy a fractional share on the stock market, but there are companies like ShareBuilder.com and FolioFN.com who only go to the market during "trading windows" where they group all of their customers purchases and sales together in order to avoid unneeded market activity costs and they can divide the shares into fractional numbers among the customers. Whatever less-than-a-share fraction goes unallocated ends up being owned by the company as part of the cost of doing business.

Re:1/2 share

[Inda]

We used to have a Shares Club at work. About a dozen of us chipped in between 10 GBP and 50 GBP a week. We did alright out of it until redundancies split the club up.

Nice!

[The-Bus]

So now it's overpriced by a factor, of what, 6? Instead of 10?

Re:Nice!

[finkployd]

If people are willing to pay that price, then it is not overpriced.

Finkployd

Re:Nice!

[The-Bus]

Well, now we might be splitting technical hairs. By adjusting a previously flawed calculation of mine, we know the PE is somewhere in the range of 100+, but now Google has a 25% discount (roughly) with the new price goals, which brings it to about 70.

Most people can tell you that at that point, the shares are certainly overvalued. If prices still sell at that level, people are buying. That doesn't mean it's overpriced to the market.

I could buy a can of RC Cola for $50. That might be fine to me (I'm independently wealthy* and very thirsty), but most people won't pay more than $0.50-1.00 for it.

Psst. Here it gets non-technical.

That being said, I have made serious considerations into purchasing Google stock, just so I can start calling it "My Search Engine". As of today, it said it is searching 4,285,199,774 web pages. If Google's shares total about 264 million, that means each share gets to search for a 17 webpages. If I get 5 shares (or whatever the minimum is), I have "search ownership" of 85 pages, and growing! You can bet if I win** some shares I'm going to start staking my claim, and you should too!
Example: This webpage searched by Google thanks to R. Johnathan Prescott.

Then I know that if people search for sweaty men on Google, someone might click-through to their ad. That means I get $0.0000000002! With my 85 pages that I own, I will stake an ad campaign in mainland China. If everyone sees it (1.3 billion people! or 2.59999 bn eyeballs!***), and everyone clicks through, I'll demand payment for that myself, and get...

$0.26 richer!

Then I will go the grocery store, buy a $0.25 piece of candy, and strangle myself with the bag it came in.

Why do I want to buy Google?

________________
* Sadly, no.
** Best to think of it as buying lottery tickets, your outcome will probably be similar.
*** Discount sinister Chinese bond villains with eye patches and others.

Re:Nice!

[CommieOverlord]

I could buy a can of RC Cola for $50.

Where can you find it? Please tell me where!!!.

RC Cola beats the pants off of Coke or Pepsi. But I can't find it anymore, not in convienence stores nor in supermarkets.

Re:Nice!

[Anonymous Coward]

With my 85 pages that I own, I will stake an ad campaign in mainland China.

Ha! Next you're going to tell me that you're going in against a Sicilian, when a Dutch auction is on the line.

Re:Nice!

[SFBwian]

I don't seem to have trouble finding it in Virginia at all. Supermarkets and Super Wal-Marts both.

Re:Nice!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sav-On

Re:Nice!

[Cryptnotic]

VONS has it around here (Los Angeles). Ralphs doesn't. Go figure.

I knew it!

[Donny Smith]

I knew it!

I said here before it would get down to $80 within 4 weeks (once people who got their shares for free sell out) after the IPO and I think that will indeed happen.

It's not only the lame pre-IPO management, it's the fact that they're a single product company and that product (ads) is a commodity.

Their placement technology is probably the best at the moment, but once someone else does that part better and sells it to Yahoo or Microsoft, they head further south...

Re:I knew it!

[blankslate]

Methinks the major asset Google has at this point in time is its brand. Think Apple through all those years they made shithouse hardware (pre OS X) - it was hard to find anyone who had an opinion who wasn't swept into the starry-eyed Mac enthusiasm for what was, at that time, inferior hardware and software with a higher price tag (than Wintel)** Apple failed to disappear because marketing (and initially leagues-ahead technology) left such an impression ("mindshare" if you like) that they effectively rode off that for years. Google seems to incite a similar loyalty and feeling of 'cool' among it's users. Perhaps that's something that can save them when they go up against MS properly, and they rely on people to actively install / use alternatives to MSN or LongHornBar ... ** Disclaimer - they seem to be back on the horse now, and I quite like OS X and G5s

Re:I knew it!

[Hassman]

The funny thing is, is that 80 dollars a share is STILL way overpriced.

This is not a billion dollar company. $80/share has to put its P/E ration close to 100 if not over, esp. since they are cutting the number of shares available...I'm too lazy to do my own calculation.

Frankly, between all the shadyness (SEC filings, then a new filings to reverse their old filing, missmanagement of shares, etc...) of this IPO, I lost interest a long time ago.

Re:I knew it!

[ajs]

Google doesn't set these prices. They are simply responding to the market, and as they get better and better estimates of what the dutch auction is LIKELY to set, they are required by law to tell the SEC what they think it will go out at. They're estimating on the high side as they should, but if they get information that indicates with a high degree of certainty that it will go out lower, they need to disclose that.

The real problem here is that the SEC's regulations make it quite difficult to comply while offering a dutch auction. Either the SEC should outright ban such things, or they should fix the regulations so that it's no harder to comply with the regulations for either format (e.g. you should be required to file information about the general valuation of your company, which is all in the S1, but there's no reason in a dutch auction to file an estimate of the opening price... you just can't know that). It might make sense to require a range of suggested price, but it should be just that, a range from asset value to earnings times some reasonable multiple for the industry would be fine.

PS: Slashdot eds should have put up a blurb after this terrible submission noting that Google doesn't set these prices.

Re:Pfft

[JPelorat]

There's always 1048576 to look forward to...

Two class of voting shares - Founders keep power.

[deragon]

And for those who are not aware, there exist two classes of voting share, one class that offers 10 votes per share reserved to the founders and CEO, and another which as 1 vote per share, for the rest of us.

See: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technolog y/2004-05-16-google-nonvoting_x.htm/

Well.....

[weekendgeek]

I don't get it. --ObviousGuy

Re:Well.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, only 178 posts between vapid observation and new overdone Slashdot in-joke!

Re:Well.....

[armando_wall]

I for one welcome our new beowulf cluster of "I don't get it" joke quotes.

rather than buy shares...

[Ev0lution]

Rather than buy shares, i've placed two bets on it: Opening price below $110, and close UP on 1st day. If the price is down because the institutions aren't buying into an auction that deprives them of big fees - as the conspiracy theory says - then the price should move up as they start buying in at the lower price...

Re:rather than buy shares...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the price is down because the institutions aren't buying into an auction that deprives them of big fees

So you think the big institutions are together deliberately passing up an opportunity to make money, and letting stocks get below their probable value, in order to make some kind of protest against the auction? You lack a basic understanding of the stock market, why do you even bother posting?

OT: 10M Post

[tigre]

Also, Slashdot's 10 millionth post today! Perhaps in this story even! WOW!

Nope it's here!

Re:OT: 10M Post

[AviLazar]

You just gotta love the representation of the 10 millionth post HA! So anti-climatic

Re:OT: 10M Post

[CreatureComfort]

Actually I thought it pretty much summed up what /. is all about.

Re:OT: 10M Post

[AviLazar]

I was thinking the exact same thing when I first saw it---Beavis & Butthead came to mind "uhhh"

Watching Google

[p0]

For those interested, you might want to try Watching Google Like a Hawk. They provide news and analysis of Googles IPO, their services and future plans. A lot of information for anyone looking forward to the IPO.

Re:Watching Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I would prefer to watch google like a chickenhawk

See that innocent looking computer housing facility?

Look again, it's a weapons lab.

"oh they can't be bad they play hockey and are 'nice' guys".

Wrong again buddy, hockey comes from canada, besides - that's a terrorist training camp in there.

we have much evidence to this fact here and here

don't believe these guys, they are just dripping in liberal "we-need-evidence-and-a-backbone-transplant" bias.

Those bleeding purple heart liberals just don't want to go into google and sort those bastards out. They are all like "we don't love our country enough" and they read subversive sites on the net. Luckily with a little help from the NSA encryption breakers (why you think we stopped banning crypto exports? hahahahaah) we have tagged them all into various MATRIX databases. Man do these guys buy some wishy-washy new-age crap from amazon along with their stalinist polemics.

"Zen and the art of coding simple command line LISP interfaces to your home enema machine" WTF?!?!?

We had to shut down one of the matrix databases the other day though, because it was comming up with all the ahem "younger" porn searches from our nations outstanding religious leaders who have really rallied behind the national cause to spread fear and crush dissent.

anyway, google is being invaded, the economy is too down and I owe the saudis too many favours to let Saddam Bin Laden, Hussien... whatever, from getting away with threatening us from the google compound. Just last week I typed "saddam" into their search engine to find sattelite pictures of him to blow his ass up.... and what do I find? THIS a freaking tribute page to saddam from the google guys. I was like OMG you guys are *SO* getting your asses invaded. And then I was like "where are they?" and I looked it up and they WERE IN AMERICA.

This is no cuba-on-our-door-step type senario this is a national emergency. So I waved my anthrax wand at those UN guys we pay to look fair and they agreed that out intel was TIP TOP.

and I rang up google and I was like (in my best john wayne voice)"ITS THE END OF THE LINE YOU COMMIE TERRORISTS, YOU AND YOUR WEAPONS WILL BE DESTROYED"

And the operator was like "Let the American infidels bask in their illusion"

It was then that I knew that we are right, and that god is on our side. I just held the mission acomplished party of a big beefy boat and we are set to invade tommorow!

Remember Yahoo's IPO

[Anonymous Coward]

Now look where it's stock is sitting. So basically GOOGLE is way over priced. People who think they will GET IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR of a big bucket of money, are just plain wrong.

Re:Remember Yahoo's IPO

[GTRacer]

Ummm, wasn't that the WHOLE POINT of doing it Dutch? To control the price spike and to keep as much money as possible inside Google?

GTRacer
- Got totally burned on EuroDisney way back when - but I learned the value of a franc

Re:Remember Yahoo's IPO

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you're actually getting in on the top floor and then have to run down the stairs as the whole thing goes down in a roaring ball of flames.

This auction scheme is designed to screw the brokers, but in doing so, they're going to screw the shareholders.

Re:Remember Yahoo's IPO

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, wasn't that the WHOLE POINT of doing it Dutch? To control the price spike and to keep as much money as possible inside Google?

Umm, the answer is in the first sentence of the article the WHOLE POINT of posting a link to it?

In a sign that Google Inc.'s initial public offering will not be as hot or big as expected, the Internet search giant slashed its estimated per-share price range and reduced the number of shares to be sold by insiders.

Re:Remember Yahoo's IPO

[hpavc]

Not really when Bill Gates can afford to pay whatever the price is.

Re:Remember Yahoo's IPO

[MSBob]

Well, YHOO's market cap is at 36B more or less. If you think that it's a fair price for YHOO then 36B for GOOG is probably right on the money (pun intended)

Re:Remember Yahoo's IPO

[Duhavid]

Speculation on my part, but another possiblity is that google is trying to leave a bit of room for the stock to appreciate post IPO. This would leave some profitability for the IPO speculative investors, perhaps as an inducement to buy?

Re:Remember Yahoo's IPO

[rs79]

Why yes, I do; I was flows down by Globecomm (now mail.com) just after they did this; the guys were the same ones that took Yahoo public. They had optimistic expectations for $400M and made $800M. They were shocked. This was probbaly one of the things that fueled the dotcom feeding frenzy.

Re:Remember Yahoo's IPO

[tricorn]

Why would Google care about whether speculative investors buy into the IPO? They'd rather the person who might have bought from the speculative investor buy directly from them. That way Google gets all the money, instead of the speculator skimming some out of the middle.

Re:Remember Yahoo's IPO

[Duhavid]

They need people to buy the stock to make the money. Maybe they dont think enough will buy if there isnt some profit "headroom". Perhaps there is a bit of PR/Goodwill mixed in there as well.

I dont know.

Why buy?

[Phoenix-IT]

I think it's pretty pointless to buy Google stock anyway... It's not like you're getting in on the ground floor of a penny-stock IPO. It it was a small company selling out stocks to get investment capital it would be different. With companys like Yahoo and Cisco no one knew how big they were going to become. So when they did make it big, the stock you bought for a penny ended up being worth hundreds. Google is already big, so the only instant millionares to come of this will be the people who work there.

Re:Why buy?

[Hassman]

You are exactly right. I'm sad to say but to me it looks like one of the reasons they are doing this is to make millionaires out of the employees.

Google is a search engine and they are making a lot of money (supposedly). The reason to go public is to raise capital for future ventures... What is google going to do?

They aren't a Yahoo, and I don't see them becoming a Yahoo. Even if they wanted to be more like a Yahoo, they don't need an IPO to do so.

They aren't a software / consulting company trying to expand their market with new clients or new products.

So unless they have something sneaky up their sleeve that I'm not thinking of, this is just a way to make a bunch of money. The only difference between them and one of the .coms is that they established themselves first, so it looks more legit.

Just my opinion.

Re:Why buy?

[Tazzy531]

They actually would have preferred not to go IPO. However, due to a SEC regulation, it was more beneficial for them to do it. I think [off the top of my head], if a company has over 1000 stockholders [ie stocks they give to employees] and $XXX in revenue, they have to make their financial information public. This gives the competitor an edge without any benefit to google, if they didn't IPO.

Google was a profitable company to begin it. It is not going IPO to bring in more capital.

Re:Why buy?

[neds_dead]

So you are saying a private company can be forced to go public? rcr

Re:Why buy?

[Phoenix-IT]

I'm not a Wall Street professional and I can see that buying this stock is a BAD idea... It's going to be too volitile to trade for anyone that isn't an experienced twitch-trader who's got a $10K a month dedicated real-time connection to the trading floor.

The price is based on all the hype, the solid income and asset ownership of the company doesn't warrent the kind of prices they are posting. I mean, how many employees do they have? A couple hundred? How much property to they own?

In the real world, it's a small to medium business... $85 a share is something that multi-national corporations are worth.

Re:Why buy?

[jimand]

Not forced to go public, but since they were forced into the reporting pain because of number of shareholders then they may as well get the benefits of going public.

Re:Why buy?

[sicking]

Google is already big, so the only instant millionares to come of this will be the people who work there.

And isn't that great! Why should you or me make a million on google when we havn't put in a minute of effort into making it what it is. Why should a company award it's investors rather then it's emplyees, when it's obvious that it's the employees who made it the success it is.

Awarding people for great work... interesting idea that maybe more companies should consider.

Re:Why buy?

[Alomex]

This gives the competitor an edge without any benefit to google, if they didn't IPO.

While this regulation exist, I think the reasoning is completely bogus. It has been put forth by the press before, with little proof behind it.

Re:Why buy?

[Hassman]

I don't think that is true. No company *has* to go public. Also if there is pressure from the SEC to go public, why did they reject Google's recent IPO bid? Also, also, how would their competitors have an edge? They only have to disclose their balance sheet. That doesn't reveal any sensitive information that would benefit another company.

From a cnn article:
"The moves come the day after the Securities and Exchange Commission declined to declare the registration effective, as Google had requested. An SEC official would not say why the agency hasn't signed off on the IPO. "

full article:
article

I'm telling you, there are too many shady things going on here. I feel like I have to slip into a dark alley to purchase this stock...

Re:Why buy?

[R.Caley]

I'm sad to say but to me it looks like one of the reasons they are doing this is to make millionaires out of the employees.

The bastards! Fancy them wanting to give money to their employees! I bet those employees are really pissed off at be ing exploited this way.

You seem to be saying that this whole thing is a scheme to take money from well-off idiots and give it to the people who built a tool I use every day and which has made my life much easier.

That's not just a good thing, not even just a Good Thing, it's a damn fine, mind blowingly excelent thing.

Re:Why buy?

[Tazzy531]

I don't think that is true. No company *has* to go public. Also if there is pressure from the SEC to go public, why did they reject Google's recent IPO bid?

It is quite true why they are IPO-ing now. I never said they "had" to go public. However, due to their size, the SEC is forcing them to release their financials to the public. This occurred back in April. They had two choices: release their financials and stay private, or release their financials and go public. Either way, they are allowing outsiders/competitors to see how Google is operating. By going public, they get the benefits of being a public company. There is only one company that has more than 500 shareholders and have not decided to go public: Levi Straus.
This Blog with link to Economist article talks briefly about it.
Here's another blog.
Better article about the regulation. -- The reporting standard also involves a significant added expense. Corporate attorneys say it can cost in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars for smaller companies and as much as $2 million for large companies. Many companies will go public before they have to deal with this reporting standard, they say.

Also, also, how would their competitors have an edge? They only have to disclose their balance sheet. That doesn't reveal any sensitive information that would benefit another company.

A lot can be deciphered from the financial reports. If you remember months ago on /. [How Many Google Machines, Really?], some guy had analyzed the number of servers that Google is using. Another beneficial information is how much ad revenue they are generating. This allows a company like Yahoo to raise/lower their rates to be competitive. Also, in annual reports, companies typically announce to the shareholders where they are headed in the coming year. All these information is quite useful for Google's competitors.

In regard to you comment as to why SEC declined their application is that they are currently still investigating whether the playboy interview violated the regulation preventing company officers from talking to the public about the company. However, they should approve it by the end of today.

In the end, they probably would have preferred staying private and not having to go through all this. In most situations, companies go public only to raise capital. Google is a profitable company and need not raise any additional funding.

Lastly, there have been a lot of negative news about Google since the IPO announcement. This is speculative, but I've heard that part of this is that the i-banking industry is angry/worried about Google's method of going public. Usually, when companies go public, bankers earn upwards of 7-10% of the amount that the company raises. However, by going Dutch auction, they only get 2-4%. With such a huge company going public, this is a big cut from their commissions. In addition, they worry that if Google does succeed, other companies would want to follow in their path and do an auction style IPO, further eroding i-banker's future profits.

Re:Why buy?

[Tazzy531]

http://www.google.com/corporate/facts.html

Number of employees: 1,900+
Cash on hand: $454 million
Total Asset: $1.079 Billion
2004 Net Income (pretax): $155 million
Google is ABSOLUTELY not a small-medium business.

You have the right idea, but wrong argument. Share prices have nothing to do with the size of the company. A better number is market capitalization, which is total number of shares x share price. This is the value of the company attributed to it by the shareholders. For example, Coca-cola, a multinational entity has a share price of $45, whereas eBay is at $90. Comparing these two numbers is like apples vs oranges. B/c there are significantly more shares of KO out there than EBAY.

At $85/share, Google has a market cap of about $22.8 Billion. In comparison YHOO is $38.75 Billion and Coca-cola is $108.16 Billion.

Is it priced to high? Who knows. I personally think that at $85/share, Google is a lot closer to their actual value than it was at $135. Also, I disagree with you about volatility. I think it will be volatile, but volatility is volatility at $100/share, $50/share, or $25/share. Although, by pricing it this high, it reduces the number of small investors that may not be knowledgable enough and would be too scared off easily.

Further SEC problems

[Ignignokt]

The SEC has also requested further information about their Playboy interview, which will delay the IPO further.

Re:Further SEC problems

[ahem]

Really. No, really. I just buy the magazine for the articles!!

Re:Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

There's always 1048576 to look forward to...

Or, um, backward to.

why

[Nuttles]

My question is why is there even this much intersest in google stock. Sure, they are undeniably the best search engine around. Also, they had made millions upon millions in their ads. Also, techies love them because of their 'do no harm' policy. The problem with google is that they absolutely dominate their market, searching with ad revenue. In searching pretty much all they can go is down. Has google tried much else that can't be tied directly to their search portal? Not that I am aware of. Does this sound like a mini Microsoft. Similar to how Microsoft dominates the desktop OS and Office sweet market and have never done outstandingly well in any other market. Soooo, I just don't see where google has another explosive growth and revenue making idea/direction in them. Will google try to leverage there dominance in such a way that Microsoft does and have people hate them for it? Will other compinies leverage their dominance in other areas to topple google?

Nuttles
Saved by Grace

Side Note: from the initial search engine that Microsoft has released, they aren't even in the same ballpark as Google in relevancy. But, microsoft being Microsoft...who knows?

Re:why

[Throtex]

I submitted a site over a month ago to Google. I put links to it on a few sites already indexed by Google.

Every other freakin' search engine on the planet found the link by themselves and indexed it.

Google just found it the other day, and still hasn't added it to their index.

Yea, go Google...

Re:why

[Nuttles]

well, maybe your site wasn't judged by googles search engine as relevent enough to index? Maybe the people at google have been sooo busy with the stock offering they are falling behind on things over there. Maybe, there are some disgruntal employees who thought they were worth 10 million and now they are only worth 8 million. I don't know, but google is the still the king of search right now.

Nuttles

Saved by Grace

Re:why

[subsentio]

Sure, they are undeniably the best search engine around.

In people's minds, perhaps. In objective relevance tests (where people don't know which results came from which engine) the big search engines are pretty similar.

The problem with google is that they absolutely dominate their market, searching with ad revenue.

I guess, assuming you think 40% "absolutely dominates" 60% (see search market shares)

The reason there's this much interest in Google stock is simple: love. Even you, who claims not to understand why people are interested, believes they are the best search engine and that they dominate the market. Very few corporations have as much good-will towards them from pretty much everybody.

GOOG may go up if the love continues, or it may go down if people realize that technology- and business-wise it's really not that unique.

Re:why

[Nuttles]

very good point.

I was wrong about the absolute dominance of google. Thank you for the link to the statistics.

I still believe though that this google 'madness' will subside and a lot of people are going to be disappointed.

Nuttles
Saved by Grace

Re:why

[Throtex]

Relevance wasn't a factor... I log traffic information and the spider didn't appear on it until just the other day, weeks after tons of other spiders hit the site and indexed it.

Do No Evil vs Shareholders

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just waiting for the inevitable showdown between the "Do No Evil" motto and "responsibility to shareholders" battle that will eventually play out.

There will be a point where these two will collide, and it'll be interesting to see the result.

Re:Do No Evil vs Shareholders

[neds_dead]

The articles I have read state that the dutch auction and the way this IPO will go was used so that the founders of Google can remain in control of the company. And I say "YEAH RIGHT." It will be a PUBLIC company, not a private company that sells shares to the public. However, from this article, the avaliable shares is reduced by millions and Google have already giving out more shares to its employees than it is selling to the public. So, in a sense, the founders will remain in control as they have more voting rights. But, this is BS, because when the shareholders don't have control of THIER company, then all decisions are made by only a few.

Re:Two class of voting shares - Founders keep powe

[Anonymous Coward]

They cut the shares by way more than 1/10:

The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Please try the following:

* If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.
* Open the www.usatoday.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
* Click the Back button to try another link.

HTTP 400 - Bad Request
Internet Information Services

Technical Information (for support personnel)

* More information:
Microsoft Support

This is disturbing

[spidergoat2]

First I find out that Google is lowering their stock price, then, Mariam Abacha from Nigeria emails me and tells me that I'll only be getting 7% instead of 25% of the 8.5 million I'm going to bank for her. I'm losing cash everywhere!

Windows Already...

[Short Circuit]

...HAS a built-in search.

XP gives you the option to search the Internet from the same dialog you use to search for files on your computer.

Unless Longhorn adds searches to a prominent toolbar, it shouldn't make any difference. Even if it does, look on the bright side: We can always look forward to another antitrust suit. :)

Re:Windows Already...

[cuzality]

Windows already HAS a built-in search.

Have you noticed that on older versions of Windows (Win98, for example) the command on the Start Menu is called "Find..."

Now the feature is called "Search..."

Does anyone else find this hilarious? These days even Windows isn't so optimistic about actually finding anything...

BlinkX is kinda cool for those of us trying to "Find" things on your computer now...

. . . . . . . . .
The List

Re:Windows Already...

[jhoffoss]

Yes, but MS Windows searches are, and have historically been, horrible. Not to mention the crap that is Outlook's built-in search.

If Google makes a spider that crawls the local hard drive, I'll use it. Especially since MS' implementation will no doubt push you to MS' website or MS{N|NBC|*} for all your solutions.

I predicted this

[Yeechang Lee]

This is the inevitable result of Google management using old and busted, Old Economy measures like P/E or EPS to judge when to go with an IPO. Don't they know that Clicks per Million (CPM) or Eyeballs per Million (EPM) are the new hotness?!?

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to leave for a First Tuesday party; I don't want to settle for just reading about it on SFGirl afterwards.

Just a Marketing Ploy...

[Aceto3for5]

I heard you only got the reduced rates if you used Froogle.Google.com

Can't resist any longer...

[inkdesign]

Can we go just one business day without some mishap in the Google IPO? Just one? Pretty please?

Re:Can't resist any longer...

[richie2000]

Just wait until SCO sues them (or buys a large chunk of stock and then sues them) and we can combine two non-stories per day into one.

In the immortal words of ObviousGuy: "I don't get it."

Google doesn't set the price

[BillFarber]

Google has reduced the price of its IPO to between $85 and $95 per share from $108 to $135 per share.

This is a dutch auction. Google is not setting the price. The price they mention is simply an estimate of what they expect the final offering price to be.

Re:Google doesn't set the price

[swm]

Although they now have some actual market data (i.e. bids) on which to base that estimate.

Picture it: somewhere inside Google is a screen that displays the demand curve for their stock--as defined by actual bids--being updated in real time as people place bids.

It probably also computes
- the market-clearing price for the number of shares in the offering
- the volume/price point on the demand curve that maximizes revenue from the offering

With data like that, economics could be an empirical science...

Re:Google doesn't set the price

[Anonymous Coward]

My bid is still alive for 100 shares at $28.

That's still a bit high, but I'll pay a slight premium for the Google cachet.

Re:Google doesn't set the price

[Geoff-with-a-G]

That was the part that confused me. In the dutch auction, if they decrease the number of shares they're offering, shouldn't the bottom part of the price range move up, and the top number stay the same?

It would seem...

[goldspider]

...that the world outside of Slashdot isn't giving Google a free pass.

When all of the dirty laundry is aired and skeletons are pulled from the closets, I wonder what Google and their IPO will look like in the eyes of the Slashdot community. So far, they've gotten off relatively light, IMHO.

Google's SEC Filings are available online

[bludstone]

here:

http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=get company&CIK=0001288776&owner=include

The S files are the interesting ones.

Re:Pfft

[BarryNorton]

16777216 would have been better for so many reasons...

Who sets the price?

[jamesl]

Google has reduced the price of its IPO to between $85 and $95 per share ...

Google hasn't reduced anything. This is an auction and the buyers determine the price they are willing to pay. Reported "prices" are best guess speculation by Google or the press.

Better editors please?

[Hassman]

What is going on with the /. editors?

"...Google shareholders are also reducing the number of shares available for sale by 6.1m to 5.5m. The total number of shares available is currently 14.1m."

So are they cutting the total available by a specific number? Are they saying the new shares available are 5.5m? Are they cutting it by a range in numbers yet to be determined?

Come on guys...

Re:Better editors please?

[Tazzy531]

They are cutting it to 5.5m from 6.1m that was originally for sale. The total available shares is 14.1m. In other words, they are selling 39% rather than 43% of the company. The rest of the shares that they are not offering for sale is kept by google.

Not too hard to understand.

Re:Better editors please?

[Hassman]

Then it shoud have said "for sale from 6.1m to 5.5m."

-not-

"for sale by 6.1m to 5.5m."

I'm just nit-picking, and it seems to be happening a lot latly.

Still ten times too much

[HermanAB]

I can't fathom how they arrived at such a high opening price. Nuts.

Re:Still ten times too much

[rudy_wayne]

Exactly right. With a starting price of $95, they have nowhere to go but down. Insiders get rich while everyone else gets screwed. Whatever happend to "do no evil"?

Re:Still ten times too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read some info on Yahoo Finance.

Basically they take the most recent income per share, project a 100% year-over-year growth rate and smash a 60 multiple onto it. Or something like that.

It hardly matters.

Re:Still ten times too much

[Tazzy531]

I think what they are doing is right in mind. Let's look at it this way: setting the price high will limit the type of investors that join the foray. The people that can afford to buy at such a high price know a little more about what they are doing and can handle a big loss. On the otherhand, if you set it at $8.50 per se, everyone and their grandmothers would buy into this. If the stock were to go down a little bit, these people would be bailing immediately leading to a further decline.

By setting it to a higher amount, they are limiting it to certain types of investors.

Re:Still ten times too much

[mcbevin]

Do any of you guys have a clue how shares actually work? That the price, whether its $95 or $.50 is irrelevant when viewed alone. The only relevant thing is the price * number of shares, i.e. the market capitalisation.

Now you can argue whether or not the expected capitalisation of $24 billion is too high or too low. Then you're just saying you know more than the exports that have guessed this figure (and its _not_ set by google - its just an expectation). And since the actually share price will be determined by what the market is prepared to pay, it is by definition the 'right' price.

Further, insiders - as in the people with friends in the right places that are thus guaranteed shares at the IPO - would get rich if the price started too _low_ and then bumped up in the first days to the 'real' market price, not the other way around. By doing a dutch style auction, google is trying to prevent exactly this from happening.

It was sad, actually...

[Wizzy Wig]

watching the google PTBs vainly trying to relive/recreate the dot.com stock market bubble with their inflated price and number of shares. Who amoung us standing on the sidelines didn't see this coming?

Re:Two class of voting shares - Founders keep powe

[winkydink]

You do of course realize that a lot of companies do this, right?

anyone who reads fuckedgoogle already knew this

[girltard]

http://www.fuckedgoogle.com

seriously funny shit- too bad the original fuckedcompany has absolutely NOTHING about this disaster.

Re:anyone who reads fuckedgoogle already knew this

[girltard]

oops bad linkage http://www.fuckedgoogle.com/

If you really think the prce will fall...

[winkydink]

then short the stock as soon as you can. I mean if your so positive. It's easy money, yes?

Re:If you really think the prce will fall...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can only short on the uptick. I don't have even that much faith.

Re:If you really think the prce will fall...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Google really sold at their original value, their would hae been a swarm of people to short the stock.

I heard 50% of Motley Foolers claim that was the best approach to google, in an online poll.

Re:If you really think the prce will fall...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't short it, but I would buy puts, if I could. (There's less risk if things go against you.)

middlemen should hang onto their stock

[grikdog]

Lemmee see if I understand this... Google brought out an IPO where a number of fat cats who are determined to buy low from Google and sell high to the rest of us bought up all the stock. Now the public price is plunging because Google users aren't stupid? Heh heh heh. Let 'em hold those shares until they get radiation sickness for all I care.

Do so! Re:Google doesn't set the price

[WolfWithoutAClause]

But they are really setting the price. Let's say n is the number of shares they are selling.

They already have a bunch of bids in; and with the dutch auction it's the n'th lowest bid that counts- that's the price that everyone pays.

Presumably they've looked at the current price, and realised that at the old 'n', the price is in the dirt, so they've reduced 'n' to push up the price- and *increase* the overall money they take.

Of course not all the bids are in yet- that's why there's some variability on the sale price.

I'm a little bit surprised that they can do this at this stage. I wonder what the price there is on the first few bids! What if they had changed the number of sold shares down to 1? Did some lunatic bid $1 million dollars, not expecting to have to pay? Inquiring mind needs to know :-)

Re:Do so! Re:Google doesn't set the price

[bgspence]

Yes, Google is not lowering the offering price, they are raising it. People who in good faith made bids based on the offering of the original number of shares will now pay the price set by the lowest price of a much smaller number of shares. That price is obviously much higher.

Share winners in the auction should be able to sue Google for the difference in price between the new offering price and the price which would have been set by the losing bid price at the original offering number of shares. And, the losers of those withdrawn shares might also have a cause to sue as well.

Google should not be allowed to change the auction rules after the bids are made. Thats simply fraudulent.

Re:Do so! Re:Google doesn't set the price

[cyberformer]

They didn't really change the rules: They've always been allowed to do this. What it does show is that that the rules are extremely biased in favor of the Google and the people selling stock, but that shouldn't be a surprise.

The stock market in general is rigged to benefit insiders at the expense of small invetsors, and that's particularly true for IPOs. The only difference between Google's dutch auction and a regular IPO is the definition of "insider": Google wants all the cash to go the people who own it now, not Wall Street brokerages.

Let me get this right:

[adsl]

They overpriced the issue. They can't sell the original amount of the offering. They want us to have 1/10th the voting power in exchange for our money. They ego trip on publications like Playboy during the quiet period. They should fire their Investment Bankers. Oh they are their own Investment Bankers, so they should fire themselves?! Maybe they should just concentrate on running search engines and the like, they appear to be competent in that field.....

Re:Let me get this right:

[TheAwfulTruth]

Google is yet another childish tech company that has no idea what they are doing in the real world. Based on their actions, I can hear their boardroom conversations now...

"Tee hee! STOCK! We're going to be rich! Go us! SEC? What's that?!?!? What's the most we can suck from investors? Make it so! Pump the stock on Playboy! Who's information can we index next? Everyones? YES!"

Their behavior has been nothing less that completely stupid as far as their IPO goes. Their buisness practices are getting them sued left and right. (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid= 1212&e=5&u=/pcworld/20040818/tc_pcworld/117449&sid =95612658) Their "services" beyond being a search engine (Google groups in several ways, GMail, etc) are nothing less than completely evil. (Here is a free service! Just give us your soul....)

I know that Google is a /. darling but they have gone too far in too many ways for anyone actually concerned with issues like "privacy" and "security" to even consider supporting them any longer. Where they go from here, pumped with billions of dollars in cash, I'd rather not even speculate on. :(

Re:Two class of voting shares - Founders keep powe

[deragon]

Actually, it is a bad habit in Canada, but in the US you do not see this as often. I follow stocks and altough I have seen many class A and class B stocks on the Canadian market, I never heard of such thing in the US. I do not say that there are none, but it must be very uncommon.

Can you name me other well known business that have 2 classes of voting shares?

New Search Engine

[havoc]

Is it just me or has Google gotten less and less useful for returning web results over the last few years? I still like the usenet portion (though I liked it better when it was Deja-news) but the web results are becoming less and less helpful. The ranking system seems to be self supporting. Does anyone have any suggestions for other good search engines? I have started to fall back to altavista again and will be trying out vivisimo.com. Don't care for Yahoo at all.

Re:New Search Engine

[DanBrusca]

I'm not sure about the past few years, but I've certainly noticed a deterioration of results in certain areas. As a random example, do a search for a celebrity, chances are that most of the top results will be for shite 'celebrity directories' that do little more than link to eachother and eBay.

Re:New Search Engine

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is comming with one. So Wait.........

why an IPO at all?

[Derek]

Would someone please explain to me why google is going public at all? Is it running on a deficit, does it need money? Is it for expansion? To where? It is the #1 search engine and, by all accounts, gmail is set to be a winner. What exactly is the point?

-Derek

Re:why an IPO at all?

[rudy_wayne]

"What exactly is the point?"

To make a few Google insiders rich. There is no other point to an IPO.

Re:why an IPO at all?

[CommieOverlord]

There is no other point to an IPO.

Yes there is actually. Say you have a company that is getting off the ground and you need to raise $50M to build a factory or whatever, then there are three ways to finance the factory:

1. Self-Financed: Have the company start really small and save up enough to money to buy it. Problem is that this could take a really long time. Decades maybe.
   
2. Debt-Financed: Talk to banks or venture capitalists to arrange a loan. Problem is that you owe people money, and interest as well.
   
3. IPO: Sell $50M worth of shares and use that to finance the factory. It's fast and it leaves the company debt free.
   

Re:why an IPO at all?

[mhesseltine]

Would someone please explain to me why google is going public at all? Is it running on a deficit, does it need money? Is it for expansion? To where? It is the #1 search engine and, by all accounts, gmail is set to be a winner. What exactly is the point?

The way I understood it, Google makes enough in revenue that they would have to file certain paperwork that describes their financials. Since they have to "open the books" anyway, they might as well issue stock and make some money in the process.

Re:why an IPO at all?

[mcc]

From what I was told, Google was founded on cash from some venture capitalists. Those venture capitalists expect an IPO at some point so that they can have a return on their investments.

By IPOing, Google frees themselves from this investment. Meanwhile, they don't seem to be exactly jumping in to this stock market thing, kind of more like timidly putting one foot in or something.

Re:why an IPO at all?

[rudy_wayne]

"IPO: Sell $50M worth of shares and use that to finance the factory. It's fast and it leaves the company debt free."

Debt free? HAH!!

You are now forever in debt to Wall Street stockbrokers who will dictate how you run the company. And if you don't follow orders, your stock price will drop sharpley.

Re:why an IPO at all?

[EastCoastSurfer]

The most expensive way to finance is by IPOing. When you IPO you're giving away ownership in the company, which if your company is successful will cost you many times over what interest would have cost you. You would also not want to run a company completely debt free. With interest rates so low it makes sense to use someone elses money to help you grow (if you needed money to grow) because of leverage.

Now, it has been stated that Google doesn't need the money and doesn't have any plans on how to use the money from the IPO. The only reason they are IPOing is so that the owners and angel investors can cash out. Personally that would scare me away as an investor. If insiders in the company are just looking to cash out, then their actions are telling me what they think about the future of the company.

Re:why an IPO at all?

[CommieOverlord]

Someone needs to take an economics class.

1. Yes, in fact you are debt free. No HAH's about it.

2. (almost) No stockholder is going to purposely devalue stock they own just because you don't obey their whims. They are in this to make money afterall, not to megalomaniacally micromanage comparies.

3. Once that $50M is raised initially the stock could go down to $0, and it wouldn't change a thing.

Re:why an IPO at all?

[CommieOverlord]

Let's experiment.

1) Company A raises $100M through debt-financing, talking a 20year loan at a 5% interest compounded annually. Over the 20 years has an average pre-debt-payment profit of $8M. Given yearly debt-payments of $6M, this leaves $2M/year for the company founder, who then has a net worth at the end of 20 years ~$40M.

2) Company B raises $100M through an IPO, with the founder retaining 20% of shares. Given the same profit, the company is free to give out say $6M in dividends (take off some from taxes). The founder then receives $1.2M for a total of $24M at the end of 20 years.

So it appears you're right then and the IPO way isn't as good....right? But wait, the founder still has stocks initially worth $20M which now puts him out ahead. But, then consider that given a standard P/E ratio of 30 the market capitalization for the company is ~$240M, making the founders stake worth $48M, giving him a total worth of $72M.

Of course there's a whole host of other things that affect things one way or the other. Like personal income taxes. Founder A is paying tax on $40M, while Founder B pays on only $24M, since stocks aren't taxed until you sell of them.

Re:why an IPO at all?

[EastCoastSurfer]

Founder B has to give up 80% of the ownership up front and in order to realize the full worth potential must sell out completely. So now founder B has given his company to someone else and hopes they will run it as he would have for 20 years? Finally, if he does sell out to get his $48M, that's it. No more continual revenue stream.

Additionally, at the end of 20 years when the loan is paid off the founder is now pocketing 8M/year. This is when the owner really starts making money because he still owns %100 of the company. Outside of doing all the math (and trying to figure in the volatile market conditions) it looks like it would only take founder A 5-6 more years to surpass B's cash+paper worth with just cash.

Remember that ownership is everything if a company ever becomes successful.

Google cancels IPO!

[polymorpheus]

No, not really; but extrapolating, that's going to be the next headline out of that place. Declining search quality, mixed up internals, expensive ads, over drive hype. "Don't be evil" -- yeah, whatever. Polymorph

Check out today's banner

[krogger]

Nice how the main Google banner is being slashed and hacked to pieces by two fencing cartoon figures on the day of this announcement.

History

[siskbc]

If you really believe this, what are you whinging about? You will make a mint.

Because by the time the shares get to the actual public, they won't be that cheap. The brokerages use the opportunity to get in on a hot IPO as a perk to their other customers. So the rich DO get richer here.

Go review your .BOMB economy history, this is exactly how the netscape IPO went.

Re:History

[R.Caley]

Er, isn't this a dutch auction? Brokers should have no ability to offer shares to prefered customers first, since you will have put your bid in long before share allocation begins.

The only way you could be blocked out would be if no broker was willing to act for you.

Re:History

[lambadomy]

You're completely wrong. Avoiding this price spike, and avoiding the "hot IPO as a perk to their other customers", was the whole point of the dutch auction. There will be no price spike, and you or I could go buy some shares right away.

Re:History

[siskbc]

You're completely wrong. Avoiding this price spike, and avoiding the "hot IPO as a perk to their other customers", was the whole point of the dutch auction. There will be no price spike, and you or I could go buy some shares right away.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I don't have faith in this remaining a Dutch auction. Are they bound by that at this point?

Re:History

[lambadomy]

It will be remaining a Dutch auction, yes. But if it wasn't, the share price would have to come down even further from the 85-95 range for investment banks to be able to get the same kind of pop for their preferred investors. There is a decent article in The Economist here. the $135 share price had Google valued at 187 times earnings. Even with the lower price their p/e ratio is pretty absurd. They would have to go much lower get anything like the netscape IPO.

Re:History

[saden1]

What you don't know is that 6 month to 12 months the market is going to be flooded with more Google shares. That's not good thing for initial buyers. Google is a hard sell for me right now. It would be best to get in after all the shares are out in public.

Re:History

[tricorn]

Well, you could if you had registered as a bidder in time.

fragile - handle with care

[bobbinFrapples]

How arbitrary (or fragile) is the $10 Billion value that evaporated relative to the $20 Billion value that's left? Market demand for corp. shares is supposed to be a good (informed?) proxy for the underlying value - so how valuable is what's left and for how long?

Total Number of Shares available NOT 14.1 Million

[zookie]

The story summary is incorrect. Direct from Google, there will be "a total offering of 19,605,052 shares." 14.1 million is just the part that Google is selling. The rest is coming from existing shareholders that are looking to cash some of their shares in. The story I submitted at least got that part right :(

Here's more of what Google sent to registered bidders:

Please be advised that the prospectus for the offering of Google's Class A common stock has been amended to change the estimated offering price range and the number of shares to be sold in the offering. The offering price is now expected to be between $85 and $95 per share. As originally planned, Google expects to sell 14,142,135 shares of Class A common stock in the offering. However, in view of this new price range, the selling shareholders are reducing the shares they expect to sell to 5,462,917 shares, yielding a total offering of 19,605,052 shares. In addition, the selling shareholders have granted the underwriters the right to purchase up to an additional 2,940,757 shares of Class A common stock at the initial public offering price to cover over-allotments.

Re:Two class of voting shares - Founders keep powe

[kiwimate]

Comcast, for one.

what i'd like to see...

[m2bord]

what i would like to see is google's price drop more while putting out more shares. i think keeping their price in the 60-75 range while almost doubling the number of shares available should help them more than hurt them. then in a few years, they can come back with a share repurchase program and thus bump up the price per share to get it where they want it.

It's All About The Money...For Google

[blueZhift]

Even at the reduced IPO price, I don't think this is sustainable. As one poster has already mentioned, there are too many variables with respect to Google's long term prospects. But that doesn't really matter because the IPO is all about raising money for Google. Yeah investors would like to see their share values grow over time, but whether they do or not, Google still gets to keep the money they raise in the initial offering.

So what am I saying? I'm saying that there is a good chance that the initial outside investors are going to get screwed! That, of course, is not really news because this is always the risk in the market. Many insiders could make quite a killing, but that is mainly because they won't have to put up any money to get shares because of options and other compensation deals. But the rest of us should exercise extreme caution. Personally, I only invest in proven companies that pay dividends these days!

Anyone thinking abouut competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider:

At the high end of the new range, the company would be valued at $25.8 billion - roughly equal to the value of Ford Motor. Meanwhile Ford has been competing with a lot of tough competitors for almost 100 years while Google hasn't been around long enough to know how well it can compete with that kind of money at stake.

Google may well be more vulnerable to competition than Ford technologically, it's based on a very small set of ideas compared to the much wider technology investment made by Ford. It's got to be a lot easier for a Microsoft or even a Looksmart to compete with Google than for anyone to start up a new car company.

So where's the value, I figure like Coke, it's almost all in the brand but Coke has also been around for 100 years while Google is still very new for most consumers, and there's a whole lot of hungry, smart marketers out there...

Re:Two class of voting shares - Founders keep powe

[winkydink]

GEneral motors trades under GM GMA BGM GBM GMS GMW GXM HGM RGM XGM

Look at the industrials, telecomms and the like.

Usually done in conjuntion with selling debt and assuring the buyers that they will be paid ahead of the common shareholders in the event of a liquidation.

On Google Alert:

[jhoffoss]

This is an interesting (and possibly profitable) example of what Google Alert can do: CopyScape, locate copyright infringements on the web.

Google Doesn't Care

[Positive Charge]

Sure the guys want to make some money, but they made it explicitly clear that the only reason they are having an IPO is that the SEC was going to enforce public reporting requirements on them anyway. All indications are that they would have been perfectly happy staying private.

That's why they got away with the 10x voting shares for the insiders, and for that matter the Dutch auction.

Re:Two class of voting shares - Founders keep powe

[deragon]

I have not checked the list of stocks you showed me, but are they preferred stocks? Preferred stocks usually do not give more voting powers, to the contrary (they often have none). Its more like a debt certificate. As I said, I do not know many US businesses that offer shares which have superior voting powers compared to their common stocks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_stock/

Google IPO? No Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2004/mft04043010.htm

Re:Good?

[Ozwald]

Usually going public allows a company to compete on a larger scale. Get significantly more money from investors, grow the company, and the shares (value times number) have a percieved value more tomorrow than today. Ideally, after a year, the company should be worth a percentage more.

So, Google: what are you planning on spending the money on? Gmail? Are you going to spend half a billion on hard drives? Are you going the email Billy G and say "Now buy us, suckers"? Are you going to need that money make another tool bar for Windows? What?

Ozwald

Nice?

[Un pobre guey]

Well, now we might be splitting technical hairs. By adjusting a previously flawed calculation of mine [slashdot.org], we know the PE is somewhere in the range of 100+, but now Google has a 25% discount (roughly) with the new price goals, which brings it to about 70

So at a more conventional PE of 10 or so, Google would only be worth a more conventional $15 or so, at which they would have opened had they opted for the same old ho-hum run-of-the-mill greedy Wall Street IPO machine procedure. The problem for those who are bidding even at the lowered target is that their shares will be in the $10-25 region come January or so, anyway.

That's genius!

[melted]

First list your goods at $99.95, and then (a day later) put a "25% off" on them. Trained American consumer will flock to whatever you sell because it's now "on sale".

Berkshire Hathaway

[tid242]

IIRC Berkshire Hathaway (the Warren Buffet company) once had shares worth $38,000+ each.

Most companies choose to issue/split/consolidate shares in such a way as to keep shares between $10 and $80, in large part due to the psychology of investors putting more than $80/share down. Also people get nervous about "cheap" stocks, especially when they're less than $5/share.

I'm no expert by any means, but this is what i've gathered from my online travels.

-tid242

Re:Berkshire Hathaway

[glaqua]

yes indeed, and they are now worth 86500 each..... Yes, that is 86 THOUSAND.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=BRKA&d=t

Warren Buffet only wants long-term investors, not the ones who flip for a quick buck. When you have to pony up 86k for one share, you tend to pay attention to what you are buying, and to hang onto that one share.

How can you lower the price on a Dutch Auction????

[Atomic Frog]

What's going on?
This is a Dutch Auction. People put in their bids, and then the price is whatever the high cut-off limit is.
It depends on what people bid, you can't lower the IPO price! This isn't a regular IPO

You can reduce the number of shares?

[doodaddy]

Reducing the number of shares in a dutch auction seems unfair.

Imagine there are 2 shares and you have a buyer for $100 but all other buyers are more reasonable at $20. The buyers would then get a price of $20 (the max price that covers all shares). The seller makes $40 for the two shares. The buyer who would pay $100 gets in for $20.

Now imagine you reduce the shares, in the middle of the auction to one. The single buyer pays $100, and the seller gets $100 (instead of $40 total) for only gives up half the shares!

Sounds fishy.

Re:You can reduce the number of shares?

[jyoull]

That is a really good observation....
yes...
it does seem fishy, but part of the IPO process is also this kind of tip-toeing around trying to gauge who takes what at what price. The Google IPO is somewhere in the middle (muddle?) of a pure public auction and a traditional IPO process, and that process is about negotiation as much as sales... so IPO bidders are drawn into a negotiation whether they want to be or not... this is interesting.

In a regular IPO I believe the brokers who are the first step between company and public market, would be aware of how many shares are going out via the IPO AND at what price, and would have a right of refusal up to the last minute.

Now, strictly speaking, a Dutch auction does provide this ability to fix the bid price, but the bidders in this case do not have full information -- picture an in person Dutch auction where you can see exactly where the bidding stands during the period of bidding rather than only after bidding has closed.

I would feel more comfortable having full information about the state of bids, rather than Google reserving that privately.

But you still have to meet your broker's reqmts

[Anonymous Coward]

I kept answering the Ameritrade questionairre and upping my "liquidity" up and up - It was clear that only account holders with more than $1 million are going to be allowed to bid.

Re:But you still have to meet your broker's reqmts

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard on NPR similar stories about Ameritrde. Apparently E-Trade was letting some of the poeople Ameritrade reject in on the IPO. One person interviewed was 27 with a "net worth of $50K-100K."

Reducing the share count to raise the price

[glaqua]

Since this is a dutch auction format, the lowest priced successful bidder effectively sets the price for all the shares. They allocate all the shares starting at the highest priced, until they hit the one where they have allocated all the shares, and the last one is the price everyone pays.

This means that my bid of $5.00 for 1000 shares would have been successful until they reduced the # of shares.

Bastards! :-)

Realtime Quote

[stecoop]

I just did a realtime quote after the auction ended :
Security Name: GOOGLE INC CL A (GOOG)
Real-time Quote:
Bid: 1.70 Ask: 24.28
Last: N/A Chg: No Chg
Market: NASDAQ NM Tick: Down

I dont know if this will be the actuall price or what but interesting non-the-less?

Google guys don't grok basic economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Set the supply and let the market decide the price! I'll swap you 40 ATT and 40 Lucent for 54.7 Google on the first Tuesday with a blue moon, following the sale.

Who said the auction was over a month ago.

[Chatmag]

It's over now, and I still say the price will stabilize at around 40.00

No, Google does set the price

[nothings]

You seem to have missed the part of the prospectus where they explain that they reserve the right to set the stock price to a value other than that determined by the auction.

During the bidding process, we and our managing underwriters will monitor the master order book to evaluate the demand that exists for our initial public offering. Based on this information and other factors, we and our underwriters may revise the public offering price range for our initial public offering set forth on the cover of this prospectus. In addition, we and the selling stockholders may decide to change the number of shares of Class A common stock offered through this prospectus. It is very likely that the number of shares offered will increase if the price range increases.

and

The initial public offering price will be determined by us and our underwriters after the auction closes. We intend to use the auction clearing price to determine the initial public offering price and, therefore, to set an initial public offering price that is equal to the clearing price. However, we and our underwriters have discretion to set the initial public offering price below the auction clearing price.

Rats

[Anonymous Squonk]

I was hoping these would fool enough people, so that I could have shorted the bejeezus out of GOOG at $150/share.

Even $80 is way overpriced, but not so much so that I'd risk a short there.

Suddenly, Google has a reason to boost Linux

[leonbrooks]

This battle Google will lose. Everyone will have Microsoft's app.

When you think about it, Microsoft is everyone's worst enemy because sooner or later they will be competing directly with you in your own field.

I know that there are mechanics and child-care workers out there who would never believe this, but if Microsoft survives, they will be facing them as competition. Sooner or later, Microsoft will get a real share of the car computer market (diplomats being locked into their vehicles etc notwithstanding: money talks, and can to a certain extent override failure to perform) and will start making devices to keep children occupied and (at least in principle) developing.

No matter how small and remote your niche, Bill will tap on your shoulder one day. So you're a rice farmer? Guess what? Bill probably already owns a bio-patent related to your crop.

As they face this issue, Google will become in increasing degree one more important enterprise with a deep vested interest in bringing Microsoft down.

About your tagline...

[leonbrooks]

Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.

No. Seeing screenshots of any Linux distro will disabuse you of that notion. However, you can get lots of good text adventures which will run on it.

Re:About your tagline...

[jhoffoss]

Well, I use Gentoo, so the install and beginning of usage is all text-based. I use X regularly, but with Fluxbox (minimalism at its best) and I do as much as I know (or can figure efficiently) at a command prompt.

Aside from that, this was my modification upon seeing another /.er's signature: "Windows: The worlds worst text-adventure game."

Ha, HA!

[appleLaserWriter]

nothing more to say, really. Move along.