Slashdot Mirror


Larry & Sergey To Cash In $5.5B of Google Chips

theodp writes "According to an SEC filing, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have adopted five-year trading plans to sell about 5M shares each, which would yield each about $2.75B based on Friday's closing stock price of $550.01. BTW, Google kicks in 12 cents to Social Security and another 2 cents to Medicare on its founders' celebrated $1 annual salaries." After this stock is sold, the founders will hold less than 50% of the voting shares and thus will give up voting control of Google.

15 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. They will still control Google by linuxgurugamer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even if they have less than 50%, if they have the largest block then in all likelyhood they will still retain control.

    1. Re:They will still control Google by nurb432 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Only on paper. The other 50+ % could tell them to take a hike, as they change Google's direction into uncharted, less 'friendly' territories.

      The wind of change is coming, hide your data.

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    2. Re:They will still control Google by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Also, since Eric Schmidt isn't selling his shares, the three of them together will have far more than 50% of the voting shares. (reference)

    3. Re:They will still control Google by Bender+Unit+22 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's the internet, you can't take your data back again, only pollute it.

    4. Re:They will still control Google by Jay+L · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is their signal that they think it's over.

      No, this is their signal that they wouldn't mind having $5.5 billion dollars around that doesn't depend on Google.

    5. Re:They will still control Google by mindstrm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It is? Perhaps it's just smart financial strategy? It's called taking profits. Their SEC requires them, along with pretty much every other insider, to file their stock selling plans ahead of time. They can't just buy & sell google stock like you and I can at a whim.

    6. Re:They will still control Google by derGoldstein · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean Mr. "If You Have Something You Don't Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn't Be Doing It"? Sure, I'll sleep soundly tonight.

      He stayed on Apple's board long after he knew about the Android move, and he's usually the one pushing the "it's technically not illegal" line. I don't see that he's the best person anyone would like to leave their data with. IMO, prepare for more Facebook-esque pranks from Google in the near future.

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
  2. Why do I care about Google contributing to SS? by solafide · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why does it matter if the founders are contributing to SS? They're hardly going to need to draw on it, so everyone else can continue paying in and later drawing out their money. Oh wait, that isn't how SS works? Drat.

    1. Re:Why do I care about Google contributing to SS? by wizardforce · · Score: 5, Insightful

      These two will probably never see a penny from Social Security, even if they were contributing now.

      As a 23 yr old, neither will I.

      --
      Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    2. Re:Why do I care about Google contributing to SS? by Jacked · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And I think you should contribute 100% of your wages to me! In other words, it really doesn't matter what you think they should do with their money. It's theirs, not yours.

      But seriously, they aren't exactly getting a free ride in regards to public services such as police and fire departments. You have to keep in mind that Google employs tens of thousands of people. People that are earning high wages and paying lots of taxes. So, the founders are paying lots of taxes indirectly by employing thousands of people.

      Besides, they may only be taking $1 annual salaries, but that doesn't mean they have no income. I'm sure they have very high incomes, from sale of stock, from investments, etc. And on those items they have to pay income or capital gains taxes. And, I'm sure that whatever taxes they have paid, plus the taxes they will end up paying on the upcoming stock sales, will completely dwarf any that you or I will pay over the course of our entire lifetimes.

  3. Re:BFD by sopssa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even more so, it seems like Google has been doing some huge changes lately (maybe pulling out of china, android for mobile phones, photographing every street on the planet, current "main guys" and owners starting to sell shares).

    Remember that their current stance on privacy (and especially their datamining everywhere) doesn't tell anything how the company will be ran in future. It's even more worry some when the 'geeky' owners sell their shares and leave control to business people.

  4. Re:Escape before they go Enron crazy! by groslyunderpaid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because their salary is $1 and they want to spend some money?

    If my salary was $1 and I had over a billion in stocks you best believe I'd be cashing some of it out....

  5. Re:The SS/Medicare comment is pointless by Conception · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One reason is a flat tax, just as sales tax, has a more significant impact on the poor. If the tax rate is 10% and you make $100 a weak, the difference between 100 and 90 is pretty significant. If you make 10,000 a weak, the different between 9000 and 10,000 is far less significant. So, a flat tax is "fair" but only from a certain set of principles.

  6. Face by zogger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know what? When it comes to face, I think the rest of the planet needs to make it so they lose face all the time. They need to, untrustworthy gangster scum need to "lose face". We should stop kowtowing to them like that, ALL the time. The only face they really want is your face with their economic and physical boot in it. Screw that.

    The Chinese "leaders" are the direct unbroken political descendants of a regime that murdered millions of their own people and engaged in genocide with other people. I have no idea why we even set out on this path to make them richer and more powerful, we wouldn't have done that with the stalinists, nope, nor hitlerites if they were still in power, but for some reason, these murderers get a free pass, like we are just supposed to play make believe history didn't happen and today's reality isn't happening.

      The industrialized and more civilized nations (in cahoots with various big business trader traitors and their political puppets) handed them for free, or sold cheap, or they outright stole, and continue to steal, most of the crown jewels of the knowledge and techniques of said industrialization and modernization and *still* we are supposed to be oh so freaking worried about their "face". Well...too bad!

        *(*&&*( their dang tyrannical despotic "face", they *need* to "lose face" for being mass jerks. (**&*^ all this bowing and scraping and treating them like they are civilized and honorable. They aren't, they are just modernized thugs, same as they have always been, and getting more powerful daily. They are and have been a major serious threat to the rest of the planet.

      The best thing we could do is pull out, make all these stupid global companies just pull the heck out as well, or kick them out, before we are too poor and too far gone into stupid debt, before it is too late to build back up the west's industrial base, the true wealth creation parts of our economies.

      That's the main reason we are hurting economically, we let them billionaire traitorous skunks with their despotic allies with their precious "face" swap out our manufacturing for that conman crap about being a "service" economy and emphasizing high stakes casino gambling as some sort of wealth creation "industry". Then they ran that little multi trillion bail out pure extortion racket on top of that!

    There's been ZERO quid pro quo budge with them people, no reform inside that nation, no freedoms there except the freedom to be global class crooks, with caveat emptor products, since we handed them the means for wealth creation. All they have done is gone on an around the world grabbing spree, grabing industry after industry, and now raw resource after raw resource, and every time some one dares to point this out, the wall street gangster tools and their chinese mafia brothers cry "protectionism!" BS, they have been "protecting" that cooperating mob gang since day one, it's time for a little more proactive self defense *protection* back.

  7. Re:It is about time by Nebulious · · Score: 5, Insightful

    YEAH! Google should be all about the short term and next quarter's profits! That's how our economy's so strong today!