Slashdot Mirror
Google Share Loss Amounts to Billions
aCoward writes "Today's full page headline on the UK Independent: £13,000,000,000 in Googlised colours, with the subheading Google shares plummet in one day amid growing fury over censorship and plagiarism. While the company says it isn't worried about the stock price correction, there are other issues at hand." From the article: "Google is under mounting pressure from many traditional industries: telecommunications companies do not like its plan for free internet phone calls, book publishers and newspapers have filed a lawsuit to try to prevent it from digitising library materials, governments are worried about its satellite-imaging service Google Earth and privacy advocates have a growing list of concerns about everything from its e-mail service to its desktop search function, both of which may make it easier for hackers or government agencies to gather information about individuals without their consent."
I'm not an investor or broker so perhaps someone can explain this to me while I furrow my brow in a vain attempt to understand the situation.
From TFA:
It was the second time in a week that Google shares - the hottest, most talked about company stock in the world - were plunged unexpectedly into a frigid bath.
Ok, shares plunged. Got it. Now, let's go look at the big board for the last five days. Ok, I see the plunges, $430 to $390. Ouch--12%.
But with today's trading, as of 11 AM Central Standard Time, shares are hovering around $405. How frigid is that "bath" if it only takes five days to get back up to $430? Clearly it's already rising back up to its once held position.
Perhaps it's time I make 12% on that extra $1,000 rainy day money I've got lying around. What does slashdot think? Google stock for the (almost certain) cash or Rickenbacker bass to make my going-nowhere-band slightly better?
My work here is dung.
The sad part of this is it's because investors weren't happy with profits being up "only" 82%. They had expected more. So they sold.
Is the stock market full of asshats or what?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If you're playing the stock for the long haul, you're just chuckling to yourself. Its up how many fold in the past 12 months?
This reminds me of the spending spree done by tech companies during the stock price boom of the late 90's. Google has now found themselves with a shit load of cash, and they figure they better do something with it before people realise how overvalued the stock is. Link
I'd say call me Nostradamus, but this should have been obvious to everyone.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
and the fact that they missed their earnings estimate has no impact..
I guess there aren't clear-cut topics for everything, but is this really a "politics" issue? I guess they mention "government" in the blurb, but still...
Google's riduculously high stock price amounts to a gamble on the part of its investors. I wonder how many investors knew this was coming and were smart enough to short this stock.
In fact, the censorship stuff would make people more intrested in investing. The problem is that they missed earnings estimates (not their own estimates, but other peoples). Some people say because of a diffrent tax scheme or whatever, but I doubt that.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is the price of doing the right thing (most of the time).
Google may indeed have a hard time ahead of it, especially legally. It's legal bills are certainly going to be a large amount of their budget. Personally, Google scares me - they're a giant, and they succeed at almost everything they do, and what's almost worse - they usually have good products. This sounds good, but it just means they're entering more and more arena's, as the article says, and what happens when one day they control everything?
At the end of the day, even if Google stops expanding right now - cuts out Google Earth, Google News, etc it would still have a massively profitable advertising business. So even if its growth slows, even if its stock plumets (face it, it is unreasonably high), it isn't going anywhere. As Google itself said - there's no reason to worry about the stock dip.
-Daniel
Sure, it's not really (nearly) large as google, but we're growing. Yes, i'm the founder/operator and the one looking to spread the name.
Wer don't track your IP's, we don't identify your sessions, we don't flood you with toolbars, we don't inject our apps into everything and we don't aim to be anything but a good search platform built on open source and open ideas.
Give us a whirl.. feedback is always appreciated.
You have a choice.. i'd love your support but as long as people choose google no one will be able to replace it and your data/ethics/privacy concerns will be history and what google does will be status-quo
http://www.mozdex.com/
At least if is fury driving the drop.
If it was waking up and smelling the coffee, that'd be a different story.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The stock price took a hit yesterday because Google didn't meet analysts' *quarterly* expectations. BFD. Anyone that's not in the stock market for the long run, please do us all a favor and leave. The following exerpt from an AP article this morning sums everything up:
"Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have vowed not to forecast the company's earnings because they worry about becoming caught in a trap that will require them to focus on short-term profits at the expense of what's best for the long haul.
The no-guidance policy has forced analysts to make educated guesses that previously vastly underestimated Google's rapid growth. And that helped fuel perceptions that the company could do no wrong."
Meanwhile, anyone that bought in at the IPO or any number of months ago is sitting pretty.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Journos read too much in the stock price which essentially reflects Wall Street's short-sighted approach to stocks. When Google posts great profits, the same folks will again push the stock to stratospheric levels.
I'm not asking that in a wide-eyed naive way, but rather in a realpolitik way: Can a company make compromises with the "keepers of the keys" without losing its core values?
The deal with the PRC to censor certain anti-China items comes to mind. According to Google, the situation is "better with them there than not." At what point does a rationale become a self-serving rationalization?
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
So, 13 billion pounds is about 26 billion bucks. And if that's 12% of google's net, that means it's worth like $217 billion?
Isn't that... alot? Or did I miss something?
And why do 'tulips' spring to mind over this news...?
Some people can only dream about how their billions are doing.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If that growth rate slows to that or a more "normal" company then yes the price will tumble as the numbers will dictate that it is not wise to bet on growth to continue at that pace in the future. This is not Wall Street being stupid and not valuing Google as much as it is Wall Street realizing that maybe they were too optimistic that Google represented the second coming of the dot com boom. If Google continues to behave more like a regular business in relation to growth rate and earnings expect it's stock price to come back down out of the stratosphere over the next year or two.
Also, Google is starting to get into the "throw a lot of things at the wall and see what sticks" model of new projects. Probably because they have oodles of cash sitting around and they need to do something with it. Unless those start bringing in profits traditional investors will start losing faith in the company, and that spells lower stock prices.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Whoop-dee-do. I can't believe the amount of attention this is getting. I can't help but believe it is due to the many old guard businesses (media and otherwise) getting whooped and threatened by google.
Google's stock has been a great investment for anyone who didn't just wake up and discover them. If you bought it a year ago, it has still doubled.
Google's stock price has doubled over the past year.
And I don't think we're going to stop using google search and google maps and all the other tools just because their quarterly earnings are a little under expectations.
While I think the discussions are good to have, I don't think most of these concerns are all that worrisome. There are a bunch of privacy issues, but that is going to be the case with any company that deals with that much data. Also, Google is the only search company that didn't roll over and give up their data at the first request of the US government. There are not that many 'no-cost' services that are willing to pay lawyers to fight for their user's privacy.
What if that mime really is trapped in a box?
I would have thought that a journalist would understand the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement. They are two separate things. Plagiarism is when you take credit for others' work. Copyright infringement is when you copy something that you aren't legally permitted to. You can commit copyright infringement without plagiarising (e.g. the majority of music sharing) and you can plagiarise without committing copyright infringement (e.g. taking credit for something that is public domain).
As far as I am aware, Google are not being accused of plagiarism by anybody but this journalist. They are being accused of copying news headlines illegally, but that's clearly not plagiarism, as the headlines link to the original story.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Nearly all of the stock charts out there neglect the time span between market closing and opening the next day. They usually just take the difference and indicate this as an overnight jump.
The real story is that the stock plummeted about 16-18% in about the 20 minutes after market close. Overnight, that number readjusted to about 4%. Therefore, all the charts out there will neglect the momentary 16-18% drop, and just show the 4% drop. I've personally taken a small hit from the recent GOOG shakiness, but realize that it's only the short-term investors that are causing this. I bought (a small amount of) GOOG stock not for a quick buck, but for long-term appreciation. I sincerely think Google is doing good things that will make money for its investors (eg: me).
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
If you're confident in googles abilities, and you believe that the telco's current attempts to extort money from the internet will fail, then you may see this as an excellent buying opportunity.
i o-tracker//
http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/standard-portfol
I still don't understand how can Google be valued at over 100 billion USD. An advertising company that also built some pretty good software? The lion share of their profits comes from ads, but I never click on those ads. I guess there must be someone out there who does click on them.
Maybe Google shouldn't have based its operations in the States? All of these companies are now thinking about suing Google for threatening their older business models. No surprise there. But we now see how NTP patents are being thrown out of the patent office, the same can happen to other firms. Google has plenty of leverage now, even government officials maybe using it once in a while. On the other hand Google has probably pissed off some people in the government, who wanted to get access to their search logs.
In any case, all of this stock price movement is based on speculations. It was based on speculations that Google will do well in the beginning, and it is based on speculations that Google may get hurt by other firms and even the government.
As the user of Google search page but not a shareholder of Google stock, I only need to know how these speculations will affect the quality of the free services I am getting from Google. Everything else can burn in hell.
You can't handle the truth.
Delete everything, replace it with:
2006 - Google is destroyed by all those who fear it.
That was the funniest thing I've seen all day.
Do people actually think that it is because of programs like GooleEarth that allows governament agencies to spy?
I could just picture dubbya sitting at the edge of his chair on release day saying, "now I can finally see what my house looks like from the sky!!!"
Like gimme a break. I bet all this FUD is just a bee put in someones bonnet with a whole bunch of dollar bills to keep it there. Remember that joe smith is already sold on Google but M$ controls those with money, that is why they are bitching and whining.
If I had a say I would only digitize at a per author/publisher basis and show them the sales and intrest that can be generated using this technique and then charge the suckers a premium when they come crawling back. As well I would fill it up with independants and show how usefull these publishers really are, hell maybe publishers are scared that google could supplant their positions by more effective distribution and publishing and have fear it will put them out of a job.
I think that even if Sergey and Lary have nothing else under their hat, they still have a couple of years of cash and street credit to screw with.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
I mean, Google's shares are far to high for the reality of what they do. $400 a share is ludicrous. I mean, most other companies would have split a handful of times if their stocks were truely worth $400 a share, the fact that Google hasn't split yet suggests they know they are in a bubble, and that bubble will burst. I mean, Microsoft's shares are $27, Intel is $21, Apple is a gem at $73, I mean, all these companies MAKE and SELL stuff, the just don't exist virtually like Google does.
$400 a share won't last. The problem is that when Wall Street starts to see those values plummet, they will intrepret this negatively and act accordingly (expect lots of jumpers piling up in Wall Street). Google will tank. Anybody not realizing this bubble will burst deserves to lose their shirts in the stock market.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
These other companies are feeling threatened by Google's success over the past year, and are just trying to reduce the impact that this will have on their business.
http://www.robotii.co.uk/
At first I was optimistic about Google, but I fear that they have grown too big for their britches and may be headed for a massive crash. All of the seemingly disparate aquisitions, massive outlays of cash on semi-unproven technology, no cohesive vision, and a strange business culture. They toot their own horn a lot but really produce nothing of great worth, they also claim to be the best and brightest but seemingly small fixes or glaring holes go untouched or unknown for long periods of time.
I have lost almost all of my respect for the company as a whole, and honestly couldn;t tell you what they do any more... I think many investors are in tune with my thoughts too, and that spells trouble.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Buy
Governments and large industry consortia are unhappy because Google is offering too much individual freedom....
Civil liberties advocates are unahppy because Google is collaborating with a government to restrict individual freedom....
I am grouchy about what Google is doing in China, but this article does give me pause. I'd rather see Google survive and take on all those other repressive forces (which are hard at work in democratic countries to convince us that we have to be restricted from information to protect ourselves and to protect our economies) than have it go down because of its evil work in China. (What I'd really like to see is Google stand up to China and stand up to all of the others, but oh well. Google is a publicly traded company now, so it really is just a matter of time until "Don't be evil" turns into "evil, good, whatever, just maximize shareholder value.")
-Rob
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It seems to be vogue to start calling Google evil. Even if you don't agree with all of it's policies/decisions, I think some of the items prove what Google is bent on actually *changing* the world, unlike other big software companies (ending with '$').
The two extremes of the net seem to be: (A) A useless copy of what is out there in the real world. Because of copyright laws, links can only be done to the top of a website, and the majority of content in the real world will never reach the interweb. (B) All information is on the interweb, and freely accessable by all. In addition, because of its importance, everyone will have access of some type.
It's not to say that their fight is completely altruistic. I think they see themselves as becoming the new hub for the transmission of *all* information. But at least it's in the direction the general populace wants. I also think this is why their "do no evil" decree is so important.
Google lost $13B US, not $23.1B US
What's with all these complaints coming against google?
telecommunications companies do not like its plan for free internet phone calls
Well, duh, google is doing things better and cheaper, no one likes competition, everyone not employed by AT&T should welcome VoiP
book publishers and newspapers have filed a lawsuit to try to prevent it from digitising library materials
This is more valid. Google is starting to tread some murky waters with copyrights.
governments are worried about its satellite-imaging service Google Earth
Google does NOT own any satellites. Google just aggregates free satellite imagery and provides a great interface. Nasa did the same thing. Go check out Nasa Worldwind.
and privacy advocates have a growing list of concerns about everything from its e-mail service to its desktop search function, both of which may make it easier for hackers or government agencies to gather information about individuals without their consent.
To be honest, I actually don't know much about how google handles the desktop stuff. However, are people seriosuly bitching that google made an e-mail client. Following that logic, hotmail and yahoo are making it easier for hackers and government agencies to gather information on me. Hell, I better run out now and buy my own email server to keep inside my house in a locked vault. IIRC, there was one search engine that didn't roll over to the DOJ.... *cough*
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
As Microsoft became bigger (read : multisector monopoly), consumers liked Microsoft less, and companies liked Microsoft more.
As Google becomes bigger (read : multisector monopoly), consumers liked Google more, and companies Google them less.
The difference?
Microsoft's user products generate their own sector where third parties can create products for the Windows platform. Google's products do not. Google's user products are (currently) free, if you don't count the ads. Microsoft's are not.
My conclusion:
Microsoft provides most benefit to companies, Google provides most benefit to consumers. Microsoft relies (mostly) on consumers for its revenue. Google relies mostly on companies for its revenue. Both are currently antagonising their customers, but an individual Google customer is more important than and individual Microsoft customer.
This is all just my observation and opinion, so I'd be interested to see what others think about it....
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Technology is the modern day extension of Darwin's Natural Selection.
It has the ability to accomplish tasks that would normally take thousands of people decades to accomplish. The simplest (or complex) device can be implemented to lift heavy rocks, build buildings, distribute information, cook your food, grow your food, sustain and provide life, pretty much any step in the human life cycle. Due to cost, availability and public blacklash, we are far from a complete implementation of any of these
If you are not the owner, implementer or have control over how that technology is used, you'll be scared that the technology might make your role no longer required and you will lose your means to provide income for yourself and your family. You have that right. I'd argue though, that the Google's of the world, also have the right, to make you obsolete and that it is your resposibility to adapt or become extinct.
I sincerely hope that 50 years from now, we as a society have abandonned any arcane concepts about traditional delivery methods and have the ability to analyze and reevaluate situations so that time and money is not wasted on competition but cooperation and best method implementations.
Google may indeed have a hard time ahead of it, especially legally.
Normal legal bills aren't the only problems google might be expexting. They are sitting on huge amount of money and are on publics eye. How long you think that you'll see some mom suing google for their kid being weird. All they have to say that "my son was normal until he found google and started doing evil things with things that he found from there."
Just wait and see.
Google is simply the most prominent of many companies riding the wave of history. They appeared with good tools at a time when people were just starting to really depend on such tools. They still have a lot of work to do, but the basics (their search engine and business model) are good enough to keep them on the wave.
The U.S. is in a transition, for better or worse, from the manufacturing economy we've had since 1900 or so to an information economy. I put the date at 1900 since that was about the time the country was mostly settled and people started to buy cars and appliances. The connectedness of everything, in which the primary means of communication is the Internet, spells fabulous riches for those who can take advantage of it.
The culture and legal micro-management of companies which encourages them to extract the highest short-term profit, at the expense of the long-term health of the company, is destroying our manufacturing base. Everything except weapons will soon be built overseas, since weapons have to be built in a Congressman's home district or they don't get his vote. Most such are built in as many different districts as possible, at the expense of efficiency and quality.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and others will be the new GEs and GMs. The hardware companies will continue to make money, but with lower and lower margins, as more and more capability to access the network gets built into different appliances. Wal-Mart will suck up all the retail business, buying up all the corner grocery stores.
Wrap all of this together and you see that it's pointless to fight the information wave. Google isn't inventing new, illegal uses for other people's information; they're applying old principles to the new connectedness. Others will copy their model, to varying success. The folks in suits had better get in the boat, or be washed away.
sigs, as if you care.
...its e-mail service to its desktop search function, both of which may make it easier for hackers or government agencies to gather information about individuals without their consent.
this part is rawful hahahahaha
-- lol pwned
Upon hearing of Google's demise, Steve Ballmer celebrates by gleefully throwing his chair through his window and doing the monkeyboy dance while yelling " I warned Google...MuhHaHaHa!"
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I find it much more likely that this is the HangSeng AI counterattacking after yesterday's admissions in CNN Money (see previous
kulakovich
"The subheading Google shares plummet in one day amid growing fury over censorship and plagiarism"
So google's shares plummet due to censorship...
and then
"Governments are worried about its satellite-imaging service Google Earth"
they want to censor it more?
This is the end of the world.
Don't use /. for stock tips
It's worse than using a retarded monkey throwing darts to pick your stocks.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I see little evidence that (in general) individual investors are emotional and institutional investors are rational. Quite often it's the opposite. This is particularly true when markets turn sour, and the insititional investors are yelling "sell, sell, sell" just when stocks are cheaper.
Individual investors have the luxury of being their own boss. They can hold on to any stock they want for as long they want. In the past I've bought stocks in steel and forestry that I knew were in a depressed industries. I knew I might have to wait 5 years of more before they turned around. I also knew that when they did they would double or more (thank you, IPSCO).
Institutional investors, on the other hand, are constantly having their decisions questioned. They know that even one bad year can mean the end of their job. Thus they can not afford to be too patient or too rational. They have to ride the trend.
The phone companies, the government, the media companies and everybody else aren't upset at Google per se. They are upset about the public getting new capabilities for free. Human progress normally evolves as a by-product of individuals figuring out how to make as much money as possible by doing as little as possible. Google's approach could have been simply to join the crowd -- setting up various metered services, becoming a "player" in various markets, trying to compete on efficiency and price. Instead, their philosophy seems to be to give away as much as possible while still making money. This pushes things forward much faster than the standard business model, in some cases sweeping away the very notion of a pay service. Well, that's life. Economic paradigm shifts happen now and then. Google is just the agency of this one.
I don't believe the people running Google are motivated by a desire to control the world. They know by now that they personally are going to be plenty wealthy for the rest of their lives, and I honestly think what drives them now is to do cool things in new ways that empower people. A few years ago I was saying the same thing about Microsoft. A few years from now Google will probably be the Great Satan. But for now we might as well enjoy our new toys and the change of scenery.
...but I never click on those ads.
I click every ad for lawyers, because it gives me a kick. Here... try it for yourself... click the ad links and feel the satisfaction of costing these jerks 10 to 15 dollars per click.
2. The desktop search function is limited by your user rights. If your on an admin account then of course you're able to read other users' files. Google's desktop search isn't a security problem, in and of itself. If it is able to scan other users' files, then the security problem is not desktop search, it's that your users have rights that they should not have. Google desktop search does not enable them to do anything that they could not already do. Once again, nothing to get your knickers in a twist over.
Seriously, why are people getting all freaked out that google is branching into different markets. I say let them. If it's a good idea, then they will grow rich(er). And -- as evidenced by their stock drop -- if it's a bad move, then they will flounder. It's what makes capitalism great.
/dev/random
Google stock is extremely over-inflated as it stands now. $400+ a share is ridiculous no matter what the company. Microsoft sold at an incredibly insane price right before the .com bust as well. This stock drop for Google I think is a preview of what is to come. The backlash against Google is going to be huge and unprecedented, like nothing we've ever seen before.
If Google wants more income they could easily add some more enhancements to gmail (google mail) and then start charging for it. Even at $1.99 a month or $20 for the year I would gladly pay for such a useful service as gmail. I am sure tons of people would also pay a small fee for it. A free version of gmail could have a limited the mail box size and limit some for the features.
Like any drug dealer starting out you give it way for free to get everybody addicated and then you can start charging for it. It is a good business model (Doom helped kick start the freeware -> paid software trend). Google could follow a similar trend: Beta -> paid service. The potential revenue generated would be massive.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
You mean "$26,000,000,000 - that's a big number". In the header it mentioned that it is 13 billion pounds. 1 Pound is approximately 2 dollars.
Pretty good software and: ...
- Available all over the world, adding several different medias to their portfolio every day: online text, books, video, images,
- They can find "targets" for whatever they're advertising really easy with a decent AI and all the logs....
I can't see any other advertising company, actually, advertising distribution channel, with this insanely huge market presence.
Not that I follow Anne Rand's socioeconomic agenda, but sometimes her point is valid.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
What kind of dumbass is investing in google stock for the "long run"? Or do you consider a year a long run? Those of us who are smart enough to disregard the ancient, obsolete long term stock investors lunacy get to make money on google when it goes up, when it goes down, and then again when it goes back up. Gee, aren't we dumbasses. BOOYEAH JIM!
to become the most powerful information broker on the planet. The current stock price is chump change.
With this drop the IRS can go back to the ordinary machine, instead of needing a special one just for them.
26-Jan-06 SCHMIDT, ERIC E. Chairman 4,344 Indirect Automatic Sale at $436.53 - $439.22 per share. $1,902,0002
26-Jan-06 SCHMIDT, ERIC E. Chairman 787 Indirect Automatic Sale at $426.87 - $427.97 per share. $336,0002
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26-Jan-06 SCHMIDT, ERIC E. Chairman 167 Indirect Automatic Sale at $436.53 - $439.22 per share. $73,000
Never mind the stock price. Everyone who has control over some IP is pissed off with Google because their modus operandi is so simple.
The sum total of human knowledge belongs to all mankind.
Well if you really want to make money in the stock market you have to have some insight beyond the average investor.
The problem is that even if you do have insight beyond the average investor, that doesn't mean that your investment will act as you expect it will. Attempting to guess at whether an individual stock will do well is akin to guessing at the beginning of the season who will wind up in the Super Bowl. By the way, according to Gambling911, the Steelers' odds of winning the SuperBowl were 12 to 1 at the beginning of the season, and 18 to 1 at the beginning of the playoffs, while the Seahawks had 25 to 1 early odds of winning.
It could be argued that over time, it is practically impossible to beat the market, and that almost everyone who attempts to outsmart the market in the end fails. If that is the case, investing in individual stocks (and not just volatile ones) is in the end akin to playing roulette at Vegas. Tracking an index makes much more sense over the long haul, and if you're not thinking long term with investment, you might as well be buying lottery tickets.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"I still don't understand how can Google be valued at over 100 billion USD. An advertising company that also built some pretty good software? The lion share of their profits comes from ads, but I never click on those ads. I guess there must be someone out there who does click on them."
:-( If google wants to know what the majority of people are talking about or 'searching' for with their service, they can. They know what you want to buy before you buy it. Thus they know what to invest in. It's like a fortune teller for investors and a magical influence for advertising companies. Eventually, they'll just be another bland search page just like their predecessors. I really do have the best hopes for google though. They have provided me with some very useful peices of software. Google is just another search page and that's it. Everything they have relys on their search engine. So, don't go investing too much for too long. If they find a way to come out of the computer and directly 'plugin' to not-so frequent computer users, then they have a great chance of survival. They stay in the computer world, and they'll eventually become obsolete like all computer technology.
:/
You don't understand? It's simple. Google KNOWS what YOU want. They KNOW what I want. They know what each and every individual who uses there service wants. No guessing. Big companys look at this as a company that can facilitate the requests of each individual in the general public. Hense why the government wants their logs.
That's what I think anyway. But what would I know? I'm posting as an anonymous coward.
I read that on a bumper sticker this morning. I had just finished "I am Alive and You are Dead" which is a biography of Phil K Dick. He was obsessed with the idea that he was under observation by the FBI. But as we all know, PKD was mad. Except that it seems that most of his fears were entirely justified...
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
I remember when google first annouced stock , for 80 dollars a share, i thought it was crazy, why should a search engine have stock that costs that much?. I should have bought it, could have made some cash. But the fact remains that anyother search engine can do the same thing, and offer the same products if they wanted to. I enjoy google earth, and i do use googles portal (which i like). But i still think google could drop to nothing in a day .
Very well said!
Is that if it were not for the 40+% tax hit Google took, their numbers would have actually beat expectations by a few cents. So the analysts were pretty on target without guidance from Google except for totally missing this one-time tax issue and in effect causing this dip.
Makes me wonder if Google even knew about the potential tax issue that far in advance or if someone from the IRS called them up to say "now, about those records our President wants..."
BTW, anyone saying the China censorship issue hurt Google's stock price is wacked in the head. Wall St loves anything having to do with investments in China right now, so there's no shyness about China's legal restrictions. I'd personally rather see Google stand up to China, but the reality is that chinese-language Google.com is NOT censored by Google, but IS censored by China to the point of being almost useless. The only way I see for Google to have any real presence in China is to have servers inside the Great Firewall (Google.cn), which means they're subject to the local laws.
disclaimer: I own Google stock, but would rather sell it if I thought they were turning evil.
1) The estimates aren't based solely upon the analysts' views. Frequently, the final estimate is based on a negotiation between the company and the analyst. It's not quite as explicit as that, but there are a lot of ways that the company can adjust the estimate (warnings probably being the most overt).
2) It's not necessarily clear that Sergey can sell those shares. Most of the time in an IPO, the founders (etc.) get N shares, but they can't legally sell them for a period of time after the IPO. That helps keep the founders (etc.) in line while the company gets used to being publicly traded. As such, his net worth on the N shares he has is N*(price of google stock), but it's illiquid.
Less formally, should that not be the case, and he dumps all his shares, what do you think happens to the company? A founder of the company has basically said that he has absolutely no faith in the ability of the company to make money moving forward. If that happens, a 12% dip is going to seem like a nice day.
The people who generally make real money in on IPO are the investment bankers and venture capitalists, not the founders.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
It turns out that any search containing the word "perl" and any number produces this result. Seems like more work is needed.
Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Google's products and revenues have been growing at amazing startup rates. However, the stock price has been growing much faster due to speculation. BUBBLE ALWAYS POP sometime. One can manufacture an important proximate cause, but probably any minor bad news would do.
.. and thus, in our dimension, Skynet is foiled.
The GMail server is down (as of 14:10 EDT 2006/02/02). You know what that means!
SELL SELL SELL SELL SELL SELL SELL SELL!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hmmm. How does one get to be an "analyst"? I'd love a job where no one ever told me I was wrong.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Very little real money was lost. Bid price in the stock market is always limited, it's more a con than anything else. If one day they just said "OK, all the shares get transmuted to dollars" they would have to start the printing presses and not stop for months.
It is theoretical money, just like in the dot com bubble all these people bitched they "lost" money. Untrue. You only "lose" money IF you sell off all the shares, have the loot someplace, then physically lose it. YOu HAVE TO SELL and get cash in hand before you can even start to claim to "lose" anything or "have" anything of value. Share point price drops are pretty close to being consumer fraud because the shillers never make this clear to "investors". I know MANY grown adults who think todays share price for their stocks is somehow automatic money. NO IT AIN'T. They couldn't possibly have all the shareholders in the stock market "cash out" one day without all the dollars being worth about what scrap newspaper is worth.
And FWIW, it's the same with that alleged FDIC savings account insurance, another big scam. they have around 2% cash (if that) to back that up, and THAT'S IT. Any big bank runs, POOF, if you don't have your cash in hand you won't be getting it, at least even if you do after they print it up it won't be worth much.
I don't care how smart the engineers are, if the executives are flushing money down the toilet, things aren't going perfectly and with their Price-Earnings multiple, investors can be expected to take some pause when things don't look perfect.
Anyhow, they seem to be a fine company, just not a perfect company...
These "regular" companies are angry because Google has found a way to enter or create new industries without going through the "barriers to entry" that the other companies have had to do. I say more power to google and I hope they tell these other industries (which no doubt have lobbyists working hard on making google illegal in some way) to go get bent. Google needs LOBBYISTS!!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
What kind of legal bills are you expecting other than "normal" (?) ones?
Do you actually expect them to be sued and have to pay damages?
I'd hope that would be exceedingly unlikely.
1. They have a lot of money to defend themselves
2. As a search engine, they're not responsible.
If someone downloads information on a website that they found via Google and does something harmful, Google is too far removed from the harm to be at fault.
That is 2 degrees removed from the harm. Google didn't do it, and the website didn't do it either.
If anyone who is at all responsible for a harm was considered at fault, why not sue the power company which supplies Google, the people who supply coal to the power company, etc. Where would it end?
"promximate cause" is the legal term I believe.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Google's ads are pretty shitty. They might be less shitty than a random ad rotation, but I've never clicked a single Google ad in my entire life. I used to not even see them at all. Now I just block them along with basically any other ad.
The only Google product I actually use seriously is search. Their search results have been degrading in quality for five years. If it wasn't for habit I'd probably start with other engines instead of just switching to them when annoyed by the results Google is giving me.
This has to be the most stupid comment I have heard yet.. "Google Earth and privacy advocates have a growing list of concerns about everything from its e-mail service to its desktop search function, both of which may make it easier for hackers or government agencies to gather information about individuals without their consent." If you think they are that big of a security risk, DON'T INSTALL THEM YOU IDIOTS! Also note, you are giving them your consent when you install the stuff...
What kind of company makes significant gains over a 10-20 year period? Almost none. What kind of company makes significant gains or losses over a period of months to a few years? Tons. Which one makes more sense, making bigger profits more often, or making smaller profits less often?
Make sure you tell all the mutual and hedge fund managers that investing intelligently is a waste of time, they all seem to be convinced that making money is good. If you want a long run safe investment, that's what a mutual fund is for. It lets someone else do the timing and buying and selling for you.
Think of it this way... Google shed more share value in one day than GM's entire marketcap. That's a little more than 'ouch.' At a 12% loss, that means Google is worth 8 times more than GM? GM's gross revenues absolutely dwarfs that of Google's... somewhere in the neighborhood of two orders of magnitude. A startup isn't going to just pop up and knock out GM. There are too many barriers to entry. Maybe Google is making buckets of money right now, but lots of people are interested in making buckets of money. Some smart kids from some university can and I dare say *will* pop up and knock Google off its throne, just as Google did to Yahoo, and Yahoo did to Altavista. It's only a matter of time. Google's revenue is based on the location of a fickle public's eyeballs. Some upstart with "the buzz" could change the location of those eyeballs almost overnight. Basing Google's share value on "estimated future earnings" is therefore quite risky.
Clearly it's already rising back up to its once held position.
No, that's the kind of "can't loose" mentality that cost so many people so dearly during the first internet bubble. I don't think Google will disappear anytime soon, but I'd double check the numbers before investing a lot of money based on Slashdot groupthink. Personally, I'd invest in the band. At least if it's a bad investment, you'll still derive pleasure from it. Losing your ass in GOOG will only leave you poor and bitter.
You can easily value Google from the comfort of your own chair. Just browse over to this page, and note the share price. Go over to the "Key Statistics" page, and note the total number of shares outstanding, and multiply it by the share price.
Though, you don't actually have to do that multiplication, because the very first page there already has the result computed for you ("Market Cap: 119.15B").
So, why is Google valued at over $100B? Because that's how much people are currently willing to pay for it, as determined by how much they're currently willing to pay for each individual share of the company. It has nothing to do directly with how much swag the company owns, or how much money they make a year, or how advanced their technology is. It has more to do with what people believe about the company's growth prospects; the better they think the prospects are, the more they are willing to pay. If they overestimate those prospects, then they lose money.
Are you adequate?
and post a few days later on stock news...
Every time you search on google google makes money. Ads are purchased by companies by impression you don't even need to click on them.
Not every time. I mostly use Google as a programming language reference, there are no ads for my searches.
You can't handle the truth.
It's one of those things you wonder...
Is it just me, or is this Google==BOOGEYMAN! stuff popping up more than you'd expect?
I mean, I actually read the paper and concluded 'Is that it? I've heard this eight times already!'
No I don't *reaally* think this is an evil plot to paint Google black and make the public reflexively stab it (easy as it would be to do), but after seeing http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/02/01 I can't help wondering how long we've got left before it is.
BigBad corporations have PR spin-shield generators to bog down any attacks on their operations.
Unfortunately, Google will have to install exactly the same grade of shielding to deflect unjustified attacks.
(Have you *seen* the blast radius of a false paedo/rape accusation? It's larger than if it were true!)
However, as soon as they install the PR shields, people will point and yell "You have something to hide!!!".
They can't win.
Well, I actually trust Google. Sue me!
They're just too young to have been corrupted so fast.
China sucked, yup. Now ask the Chinese people what they would have prefered. Censored Google or no Google?
Now criticise Google again.
No I'm not a planted Google astroturfer *sigh*.
(and no, there's no such thing! Dammit!)
No, we've completed a transition from a productive, creditor nation to a consumer, debtor nation in about 30 years. Someone produced all those neat toys that make your "information economy" possible. Odds are, it wasn't an American. Ideas and "intellectual property" are not tangible goods being produced by this nation. They take nearly no effort to copy. No amount of DRM or IP laws are going to change that. As an extreme case, India is not going to sit by quietly and watch its population of PEOPLE die from AIDS because they cannot afford our patented AIDS drugs. They will simply break our laws, and infringe on our self declared, concocted monopoly to produce those drugs. "Intellectual property" only exists to provide incentive to people "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." When your family, friends, neighbors and countrymen are being decimated by disease, you need no other incentive. The drugs will continue to be researched and made by people with a personal investment in them. To a lesser extent, the same applies to books, movies, songs, and all other art, culture, and information "protected" by our "intellectual property" laws. We will soon wake up to the fact that it is a total sham, impoverished and struggling to survive. Outsourcing, piracy, draconian IP laws, and our weakening currency are only the symptoms of this eventual outcome. The American behemoth is being outmaneuvered and outsmarted by more nimble nations with real production capacity, real goods to sell, and few if any "intellectual property" laws to stifle the innovation of those goods.
Historically, an average stock market investment should net a return slightly over 10%. This can come from dividends, or from an increase in the stock price. But the only reason the stock price is going to increase is because someone else is buying it who also expects to make money, either from dividends or an increase in the stock price.... So it all comes back to dividends. Companies make money and pay it out to their shareholders. Trying to make money based on anything other than companies eventually paying enough dividends to justify your investments is trying to make money by taking it from less wise or lucky investors. This is entirely possible, but requires losers as well as winners.
At a P/E of 10, the company is a fine buy if they just sit there and keep it up.
At 20-25, you wan to expect that they are about to take off; that their current earnings don't really reflect where they'll be at in a few years.
Google (according to the other poster) is at a 70+ P/E ratio. That's serious crazy territory; Google would have to septuple earnings, immediately, to justify that.
I wish these companies (another example is Yahoo!) wouldn't grow into such monsters, but it seems inevitable. I think it's time I got a static IP address and ran my own servers.
"I still don't understand how can Google be valued at over 100 billion USD. An advertising company that also built some pretty good software?"
Ya, and Microsoft, how the hell did they make so much money with some "pretty good" software?
MS sells products. Packaged products. Also OEMs pay them for every PC that gets out of the door. They also sell custom solutions (they build projects.) They also have their hands in various other markets. And the most important thing is: they get license fees from various installations of their soft. I am not surprised that with all this jaz they are valued at what they are valued.
You can't handle the truth.
So who's next for a share price tumble? Those Oracle shares are looking a bit pricey in light of recent free DB2 from IBM?
Zen tips: Pay attention. Don't take it personally. Believe nothing.
Praying that a company is still relevant, much less dominant in a decade is no more "sustainable" than taking advantage of the ups and downs of dozens of companies over the same period of time, making many times more profit in the process. What is unsustainable about shorting companies that are going to perform poorly, and buying companies that are going to do well? There is no shortage of companies doing either.
.. enron?
Unfortunately, as long as regulation can be made, the practicality of any situation with respect to economics is that it's Adapt, Regulate the disruption favorably, or Regulate a peaceful transition - favorable only to the displaced (you already got your disruption, time to trade that for allowing the displaced to become productive and creative).
Another thing - until there are no selective places of education to take care of the knowledge problem, there will always be the problem of this type. I'd wonder how Google would have done today, had there been no exclusion to entering any university, especially Stanford - and I'm guessing there'd be a good deal more success.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If you look at their products, you'll see a culture of exclusivists at every point. Sure, it's nothing to have Google quaking in its boots, but I'm glad Google is being humbled. The job will be done if the following examples can be nothing more than history.
The Search Engine: Built by a university that couldnt get a Midwesterner from a state college if they were outsmarted by one.
Orkut: Trusted friends is an euphemism best left at "elitism". When they can make this public, it will be a nice day for many.
Gmail: See above.
Components of Adsense: See Orkut.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Maybe some people remember the phrase "sunset industries". It was used about the US steel and auto industries about 20 to 30 years ago. The concept is right, there are in fact "sunset industries" that will be replaced by something else. But they chose a wrong industry, automobiles have not yet been replaced by something else, and neither has the industry significantly left the N. American shores, which I think is what they were referring to.
Now for wired phones, pre-recorded media, and some of the other things that Google is working on, may in fact be "sunset industries", but the "New Order" does not replace the "Old Order" without a significant amount of struggle. There will be a few wounded participants before this is over, some of them fatally.
Google is what ever person on the planet should fear. They are the all and the everything. On this greedy planet thier exist many different things even freedom in some places. To me google represents freedom of the internet and allthough I cannot tell thier intentions I would like to say that google is the best thing since sliced bread. Companies should fear them they are the only company with any common sence still left in them. The world needs to be pushed to drop its old ways. Libraries should be put online. I should be able to read any book that I would like to read. What is the difference if I were to go to the library first before i copie a book. The earth should be imaged. Government is bs. They seem to want to control as much as possible and we let them becuase it has become common place to. If governments fear google im happy. Because they dont even fear there own citizens. They manuiplate them. Google is feared in china because of its unlimited information capibilites. If your country needs to have true information censored so you can have your people live a lie whats the point in even telling them anything. They will not belive one word of it until they see it for thier own eyes. I hope china burns. Google stock? Like google really cares about its stock if thier in the process of taking over the world of information. Perrty soon you will have a google clothing line shoes and all. Are you googling. Think about what that would do to china's anti awarness program if all the slaves started googling about slave rights. We sit on our asses because we choose to live life easy. We watch others suffer because we like to. We need to see others suffer in life or our life is missing that hint of fear. That hint of death kasos and destruction. Google is the god of all that. All they have to do is modify the search relavance of some item and instally they are controlling what people read, do and see.
Google mauled by tax? Shares are doing awful? How abouyt we look at their stock history compared with some other big names...
:P) :P Seems to me that Google is doing just as you'd expect it to... I depends on how long your investment is, as the 5-day history might not be where you want to look :P
microsoft, IBM and Wal-mart do nothing particular...
Dell droops...
RedHat is actually out-performing google (well, depends on your timescale... but on this example it is
Yahoo, Sun and Apple all seem to be following the google pattern, if you look over slightly longer timeframes than the last 5 days