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Who Will Google Buy Next?
Androsynth writes "Kuro5hin is running an article entitled Who Will Google Buy Next?, which features a list of all Google's previous buyouts and some interesting suggestions for the future." A Google-buyout betting pool seems in order.
MSFT total equity, Q3 2005: $47.4B
GOOG Market Capitalization, 06/14/2005: $77.3B
It would be a really, REALLY difficult thing for MSFT to buy out GOOG. Esp since that wouldn't really give them ownership of the company, as the outstanding shares don't add up to 50% if I recall correctly.
Nokia is Finnish, not American.
What do Saddam Hussain and Little Miss Muffet have in common? They have Kurds in their Whey.
With a price-to-earnings ratio of 110:1, Google better buy up companies with solid earnings potential or risk a dot-bomb collapse (and probably drop the Dow and the Nasdaq a few hundred points in the process).
110:1 isn't insane, but it's still pretty high. They just need to avoid pulling an AOL-Time Warner. That screwed TW big time (now facing big losses) and the AOL brass made millions by selling their over-valued stock.
It makes a LOT of sense. Of course, a lot of the script kiddies that plague the Myspace right now will be forced to learn proper CSS or abandon ship, and I'm afraid the latter is more likely.
Microsoft has a market cap of $274bn
They also have close to $40bn in cash.
They could easily put together a half cash, half shares offer for Google at a very good price.
You are not comparing like with like - shareholders equity and market cap are altogether different things. In any case smaller companies can buyout bigger ones, by paying with shares in the combined business - however that is not necessary here.
Where you may be right is that Google is too closely held to be easy to buy - a few big shareholders could block any bid. Incidentally you mean free float where you say outstanding shares.
Isn't that only good for publicly traded companies?
If Google buys out some small-time devel with a big-time idea, how exactly could I exploit it to my financial gain?
Yeah, that's a very interesting one. Sensis is quite fascinating in and of itself. There's been a lot of talk that parent company Telstra (Australia's half-government-owned telecommunications near-monopoly behemoth -- think the Aussie equivalent of AT+T before the break-up) wants to sell off Sensis as it's worth a mint and is a quick way to inject some cash. Maybe Google would want part/all of it?
Sensis has a few businesses that seem to 'fit' google to varying degrees:
The biggest reasons Google wouldn't buy Sensis? One, it's way too regional. It's basically Australia-only (Australia + New Zealand in some cases) which doesn't seem to fit that well with Google's history -- that particularly affects the CitySearch and White/Yellow Pages businesses, I'd say (the others could probably be rolled out elsewhere -- the concepts are sound). Secondly, Telstra has a new incoming chief exec, American Solomon Trujillo (ex-Orange and US West) whose early musings would seem to imply he likes the whole 'near-monopoly behemoth' thing, not the 'selling off parts for a cash injection' thing.
Still, interesting thought.