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

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:Impossible Valuation

[WIAKywbfatw]

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

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.