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Google Goes Public at $85/share

Posted by michael on from the buckle-your-seatbelts dept.

adpowers writes "It is official. Google will have its IPO debut at $85 per share. To quote the article, 'At that price, the low end of its recently revised range, Google raised $1.67 billion, with $1.2 billion to go to the No. 1 Internet search engine and $473 million to Google executives and investors selling their shares.' Trading begins Thursday, August 19th." Got Google?

8 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. I'm more interested in... by Zugot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... how many google employees have become instant millionaires?

    --
    -- Bryan
    1. Re:I'm more interested in... by hoggoth · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > I still have a batch of worthless (for now) options

      Count your blessings. When I left a dot-com I was granted $120,000 worth of options. A couple of months later, in the next calendar year they were worth a fraction of that. The IRS made me pay income tax on the phantom $120,000 that I never got. Of course in order to PAY those taxes I had to sell all the stock at a fraction of "what the company gave me". In return "to be fair" the IRS gave me an equivelant amount of 'capital losses' I can write off in the future. Now if I ever make $120,000 in capital gains in the future I will get back the money the IRS stole from me.

      --
      - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  2. Scoffing Analysts by kaleco · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I wonder how many of the analysts who scoffed at Google's potential value of $33bn rely on it every day to research other companies.

    I, for one, would be lost without it. However, I will be interested to see how it develops now it's under external influences.

    --
    Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
  3. Some good here by grunt107 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Although to some pundits the lower price signals a weaker offering, some of this could be to GOOGs benefit.

    The lower per share value was followed by a lowering of shares available. This could generate more interest in the shares, which will drive prices up (or keep them constant longer).

    It does, however, mean the cap has gone down by over 25% (36B to 26B). Still bigger than my bank account, though.

  4. The Beginning of the End? by mkachan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I fear that for Google, going fully profit and opening to investors might in the long run have a negative impact... Will big Google shareholders be able to influence what appears in the Search Engine? Maybe right now this will be impossible, but who knows what might happen in the future... And what will be the consequences of it for the users?

    Maybe the problem is the following: there is a way in which Google is perceived now that is fundamentally wrong. It is treated as a "service" for Internet Users, the One and Only Search Engine, while it is just Yet Another Company.

    Monopolies (especially privately-owned and profit-making ones) are never good. Will Google become as Bad(TM) as Microsoft?

  5. Money for buyouts? by manmanic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With an already profitable business, and lots of extra money in its pocket, can we expect Google to start a buyout spree? Some targets might include Vivisimo with their clustering technology, Girafa for visualizing search, or even some of the better Web APIs applications like Google Alert or the GoogleBrowser, as this Wired story suggests.

  6. Bit expensive, isn't it? by jimicus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    After all, the company offers only one basic product (albeit in a couple of incarnations).

    Microsoft are starting to consider Google as competition. And competing with Microsoft has historically been a bad move - I can see Longhorn's search facilities integrating with MSN search such that the boundary between the Internet and the PC on your desk becoming blurred. Google are pretty much at the top, and it'll be almost impossible to maintain that long-term.

    So you probably wouldn't buy this share for growth. How about income? Has Google publicised what it plans on offering in dividends? Even if it did, with no past record to go on, how can you have any idea what level of income to expect?

    Even if you don't buy the share for growth, it's still an expensive share. It wouldn't take much for its value (and thus the value of the investment) to plummet.

    Ultimately, I think this share is a bet that the rich might be prepared (and financially able) to take, but most would be well advised to steer clear of. The dot-com bubble burst a long time ago.

  7. Don't buy a cent. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First, pick up and read a copy of The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham (commentary by Jason Zweig).

    1) By all fundamental measures, this stock is dramatically overpriced. (Ask yourself how a search engine -- which could likely be replaced by next years' "next new thing" -- could be worth, on a per cap market basis, as much as McDonalds.)

    2) IPOs usually only make one group of people rich: the boardroom execs. Don't be suckered by the initial rise in price -- IPOs are almost always followed by a dramatic downturn.