Despite Reports Google Did Not Just Buy ICOA

alphatel writes "In an odd PRWeb snafu, a press release was issued citing sources at Google as having acquired wireless carrier ICOA for $400 million. In full-out retraction, both companies denied the deal outright. Is this a case of pre-release or simply false PR by a third party? Could such incidents be used for pump and dump schemes?" ZDNet reports that, "at midday, more than 3 billion shares (pink sheets) traded over the counter for ICOA."

Comments

Sound like the usual pink sheet scam

[aepervius]

1) somebody buy some pink sheet stocks over quite some time for a cheap price
2) spread rumor as to make the price spike.
3) profit. There is no "????".


Heck some even attempted to use spam to spread pink sheet scam, attempting to sell those as good sale.

Re:Sound like the usual pink sheet scam

[slashmydots]

I have an alternate theory. Some dumbass released a PR that was written ahead of time just in case because they saw that it was overdue for release and was never classified as "this didn't happen."

Re:Sound like the usual pink sheet scam

[Brett Buck]

The SEC will likely be interested in this topic as well. Maybe whoever did it can get the cell next to Martha Stewart.

   

Re:Sound like the usual pink sheet scam

[mcrbids]

Given that her house can be found In the Hamptons, an area so wealthy that there's a modestly successful comedy show featuring the area as a Doctor who caters to the wealthy, I'd say I wouldn't mind at all "occupying" the cell next to Martha Stewart...

Now, if only I had a few tens of thousand of dollars in ICOA stock...

Re:Sound like the usual pink sheet scam

[kelemvor4]

The SEC will likely be interested in this topic as well. Maybe whoever did it can get the cell next to Martha Stewart.

She was only jailed for five months in 2004.

Re:Sound like the usual pink sheet scam

[squiggleslash]

Quite. In my experience, most large corporations, and quite a few small ones, have memos lying around reporting a forthcoming sale to Google. Only last week there was a near riot when Exxon corporation nearly released their's.

Re:Sound like the usual pink sheet scam

[RaceProUK]

And the problem with Europeans is their faggot accents and overall lack of achievement over the years.

Obvious troll is obvious, but what the hell.

How are you enjoying those jet engines we invented (British)? Or all that electricity (Italian)? Not to mention the US Navy was created by a Scot.

Re:Sound like the usual pink sheet scam

[V for Vendetta]

How are you enjoying those jet engines we invented (British)?

Not so fast, my friend. There was a head to head race between Whittle (British) and von Ohain (German), with both having a somewhat working prototype in 1937. The RAF's lack of interest resulted in Germany taking the lead which in turn resulted in the first mass-produced jet engines (i.e. used by the Me 262).

Re:Sound like the usual pink sheet scam

[RaceProUK]

If we're getting technical, the jet engine can be traced to Ancient Greece, and the aeolipile. However, I was thinking of the turbojet, to which Whittle was the first to patent.

Looks like...

[poofmeisterp]

It looks like someone MAY HAVE pissed off a former employee of ICOA. That is, if said person could think long-term.

rather implausible reports to start with

[Trepidity]

Consider ICOA has a market cap of around $800,000, Google would have to be really shit at negotiating to acquire them for $400 million.

Re:rather implausible reports to start with

[Sir_Sri]

Depends on what they have and what they do. Especially patents.

One would need to think more abstract that the current product, but bear with me a moment.

ICOA designs and installs wifi setups. They do this in all sorts of different areas (metro, hotels, airports etc.). Now lets say they have a patent on some tech that's only critical to one of those different areas.

Now lets say you're google, and you want to offer wifi service in mountain view, or the bay area, or all of california, all of the US, whatever. ICOA is a nothing company. But if you ignore their patent (which is particularly useful) you could find yourself on the hook for a few thousands of dollars per site, times thousands of sites. Or you could do both the decent thing and the useful thing, and buy them up.

Now I'm talking more in general than ICOA in specific. According toOTC exchange info on ICO , which includes their half year filing to june 30, they have 10.5 million dollars in debt, and 850 000 in outstanding shares, with 285 shareholders. So to buy them outright would be about 11 million dollars. Unless of course you want to price in some asset they haven't yet taken advantage of.

Think about an AMD, who have a market cap of a billion dollars if they're lucky, a penny stock like ICOA might be next to worthless if you include debt, but if you want to buy the company you need to take it all on, and AMD has projected future value of some number that is hopefully a lot more than a billion dollars, if they can just get the cash to make products people want to buy.

Re:rather implausible reports to start with

[ShanghaiBill]

do both the decent thing and the useful thing, and buy them up.

Sure, but you don't just call them up and say "Hi, we're Google and we want to buy you." Instead you do it through a broker or shell company so you can conceal your identity, and conceal the reason (supposedly patents) you want to buy them. They don't find out who the buyer is until the price is agreed to.

Re:rather implausible reports to start with

[hairyfish]

Well that's probably how it happens in the movies. In real life, there's these people called 'lawyers' who ensure absolutely everything is declared and transparent up front.

ICOA.PK pump and dump

[Animats]

The ticker symbol is ICOA.PK. This is an operating company? The stock has been around $0.0001. Even on the Pink Sheets, companies don't usually go that low. There are 3.49 billion shares outstanding. That's a market cap of $349,000. With the frantic trading today, the price briefly went all the way up to $0.0004.

Re:ICOA.PK pump and dump

[terraformer]

Right, the stock ticker and the wireless company aren't the same, which means there are a lot of dumb people out there.

Re:ICOA.PK pump and dump

[Animats]

ICOA.PK is "icoacorp.com". They're a "wireless company" in a limited sense. Their business is installing WiFi nodes in airports, motels, trailer parks, etc. They provide a "Tollbooth" system of the kind found in hotels where you have to pay to get on the network. They were apparently reasonably successful at this around 2002-2009, but not so much since. They have no exciting technology and serve no key market that would be of interest to Google.

Yahoo's stock quotes show the stock declining from over $300 in 2005 to $0.0001 now. They must have issued more stock. They couldn't have had 3 billion shares outstanding at $300 a share, for a trillion dollar market cap. Somehow they blew it, but I haven't read through the SEC filings to find out how.

No problem

[wcrowe]

That's okay. I never believe these things unless Netcraft confirms it.

Maybe it was IKEA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google needs a continuing supply of inexpensive furniture, and besides their devs may have come up with some robotic furniture assembly algorithms during 20 percent time.

Re:Maybe it was IKEA?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

In Soviet Russia IKEA buy GOOGLE.

Re:Maybe it was IKEA?

[interval1066]

Aren't the "...in soviet russia" jokes more than played out now???? Srsly....

Re:Maybe it was IKEA?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Aren't the "...in soviet russia" jokes more than played out now???? Srsly....

Indeed. More accurate would be:
In Soviet Russia, IKEA not exist. People buy furniture at local GUM!
(GUM is the Russian abbreviation for Glavnyi Universalnyi Magazin or Gosudarstvennyi Universalnyi Magazin, which was the state run department store in largish cities in the old Soviet Union)

Re:Maybe it was IKEA?

[cjjjer]

You do the same thing and /. would be a much nicer place...

Re:Maybe it was IKEA?

[SleazyRidr]

In Soviet Russia, joke plays YOU out.

Re:Maybe it was IKEA?

[NoisySplatter]

I had to post in this thread because I have been using this sig for years.

Re: Despite Reports Google Did Not Just Buy ICOA

[hpoul]

yeah, it's almost as interesting as news of a non-existing island found to be non existing.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Island_(New_Caledonia)

Little new here.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Now we are seeing the advent of high tech pump and dump.

I agree with pretty much everything you said except for having a minor issue with this point.

High tech pump-and-dump has been with us for a while. It was a major component of the "dotcom bubble" and has even been operated successfully (until busted) by juveniles on the comment features of stock ticker websites (such as Yahoo's).

What is new (if it really is new, rather than just the first one widely reported) is doing the "pump" part by suckering PRWeb into publishing a blatant forgery.

PRWeb, a subsidiary of Vocus, is in business to publish, for a fee, press releases from company PR departments, as a way of bringing them to the attention of the media and other interested parties. While the content of the press releases is the responsibility of their customers, they do (or should) have a responsibility to vet that each release is actually from the company it purports to be from.

NEVER!!!

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Isn't that the whole point, that there is no point? It is the whole pointlessness of the joke that makes it funny. You're SUPPOSED to roll your eyes.