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.
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..
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.
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
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!!!
And why do 'tulips' spring to mind over this news...?
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.
Give us a whirl.. feedback is always appreciated.
Ok. I searched for "why is mozdex such a retarded piece of crap?" and it didn't return any hits. Now I don't trust any results I get, because I know that this search result is wrong.
BTW- I am assuming that when you say "we", you are referring to yourself and the other D&D geeks hanging out in your mothers basement?
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.
Nice layout, decent results, but Google still has one thing you don't: detailed information about what I want when I search the internet.
I understand that you're trying to make a more private search engine, but in that effect, you're trying to put everyone into a one-size fits all. When I search for "Java", I am looking for Advanced-Expert ideas and tutorials on Java programming. You both give me java.sun.com as the first answer; Google goes on to the Java boutique and individual sections of the Java tutorial. Mozdex, on the other hand, goes into Yahoo and other people's Java games.
As for when I search Mozdex for C... I get C-Span, Dictionaries, everything under the sun EXCEPT references to programming (Google still gives me C-Span first, but goes immediately to Programming).
When I go searching for something on the internet, I want to be able to find what I want with the minimum of typing. Google knows that I am a programming; thus, I am probably looking for programming related articles. And they're right. I have never held that little concept that so many believe that their information is private over an HTTP (or any) connection. While many fear that, I accept it, and I truly do welcome our omnipotent Google Masters.
The people who hate Google aren't business customers. Business customers are quite happy.
The people who hate Google are the people who's businesses are obsolete by the information age. Who's target number one, in their mind? Google.
Google lost $13B US, not $23.1B US
Google didn't lose anything. It still has the same assets and liabilities it had a week ago.
Share price is nothing more than an index of investor confidence in the company, and investors aren't always wise.
That's not entirely accurate. Yes its assets and liabilities have remained untouched, but it lost monetary value. If there were a company that wanted to buy Google today it could be had cheaper than it would have a few weeks before. This could also affect its ability to raise more money (as if they needed to) because they would have to sell off more company control to raise the same amount of capital or to attract new talent who might be looking for better compensation.
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.