It doesn't really matter. As the IPO was structured, the common shareholders have very little say in the business of the company. Brin and Sergey have a different class of stock with overriding voting power essentially.
The only thing you get with the stock is the ability to go along for the ride in terms of speculation and growth in the company. It was made very clear in the IPO prospectus that Google's motto was "do no evil," that Sergey and Brin would continue to be the judges of that, and that the company would seek long-term appreciation over short-term returns.
Any shareholder mounting a suit -- or more likely, some money-grubbing lawyer soliciting for plaintiffs in a class action -- wouldn't have a leg to stand on. A similar case that really informed shareholder rights law was the case of the William Wrigley Jr. Co. when they insisted on certain practices at the baseball park they owned (before they sold it to the trib) that were not in the short term interest of the shareholders. The courts held that the shareholders had purchased the shares and that they approved of the management. From this they concluded that the management were in the best position to determine a course for increasing shareholder value. This gives management a lot of leeway in their actions, especially when these policies are so clearly spelled out in the prospectus.
Google has employees in China. I can imagine how the treatment of these employees might be used to the advantage of the Chinese government if Google is weighing whether to pull out. It would be truly dirty for the government to threaten the welfare of former google employees in discussions with the management, and it would lead to quite an international conundrum. At the same time, it is possible.
China isn't exactly known for protecting human rights.
Thoughts?
Quotes can be escaped with \. It's a nice format if you want to do some heavy processing on a spreadsheet. Export to CSV -- do some monkeying around with Perl, import into excel.
I just finished reading the essay, and he addresses this. He gives the example of people dying (I assume he means from malaria) because of the ban on DDT.
Apparently I do know the very specific meaning of the phrase and its historical origins. I think it is an appropriately short catchall (as a tag) for this sort of posturing that is aimed at providing comfort to the majority in the face of other larger problems.
Mod +20 Insightful. I should have been more clear -- if the person is truly aligned with either ideology as presented by the parties, steer clear. Of course, there are always people running on tickets who aren't exactly toeing the line.
... the republicans and the democrats are two sides of the same coin.
It makes no sense to differentiate between the two anymore. Sure there are "polarizing issues" -- like them god damn queers and whatever else is on the docket today -- but for the most part it is fairly certain that regardless of a given particular cause, the cause itself seems to be a restriction on individual liberty.
That's not really fair. It doesn't hurt anyone, and I welcome the idea of another video provider. If someone sends me a link to video, I don't really care if it's google or youtube or now yahoo. If you're publishing videos online you're probably hitting all the major players anyway -- you won't have any trouble finding the video you're looking for at any of the providers.
Sure they won't make money directly off of it... but that's not _my_ problem.
I think that is a decision for the managers of blogs and forums to make. I have no financial interest in WOXY.com, and I think it is a little different than selling VAL/UM and PRoZ^ ck. In addition, they offer free streams and free forums.
The whole point of the NoFollow Attribute wasn't necessarily to immediately decrease blog-spam -- it was to reduce it's detriment to Google and other indexes.
In this sense, it has probably succeeded. Sure a reduction in spam would have been nice, but this is still a nice first step. People always say spam is primarily an economic problem, so removing incentives is a good way to snuff it out in the long run.
I had a similar experience not too long ago when I realized that a web app I had spent nearly a year working on (when I should have been releasing early and often) was over taken by what is now a very prominent service.
In my case though, after reading through my business plan a few times in denial, I came to the realization that I had accomplished a lot and learned a lot but that was all. There's always next time or the time after that.
If I would have wasted any more energy on it I would be in a much worse situation today.
They "own" the innovation? Some people have a really distorted view of the intent and philosophy of so-called Intellectual Property. As Thomas Jefferson so nicely put it: "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
If they think that Google could have actually copied their idea in such a short time, then they are admitting that they had no competitive advantage outside the recourse of litigation. More likely, they developed it concurrently. Google has been making fat web pages as they call them for some time now and I imagine that GWT started as a tool for inhouse projects.
I know there are people with a lot of disdain for cybersquaters here on slashdot.
I recently put two domain names that I own up for sale. They point to an austere page that says essentially: "Welcome. I do not need this domain anymore and if you would like it, I am willing to sell it for $50. Contact me..."
There is certainly a difference in amount, but my domain names are fairly obscure and (likely) won't be of much interest to anyone. I'm not going to renew them, and my thought is that if anyone would like to have them sooner than the expiration then they can pay me a small amount for that. Hell, a couple of the big registrars still charge around that much for one year.
Maybe this person isn't a cybersquater per se, perhaps he once used this domain and thinks it is worth something. So far as I know, there isn't even a way to relinquish a domain name that is registered some time out into the future back into the commons. Determine what you will pay for the privilege to use the name now rather than later (or instead of another name), and make an offer. Be upfront -- "This is what it is worth to me, this is what I will pay, final offer, let me know." Depending on your project, maybe it is even worth what he is asking.
If you have a firm value in your mind and do not pay more than that value, you'll win -- regardless of whether you get the domain.
There are generally not restrictions on selling the stock after the IPO. You might be thinking of some SEC rules regarding changes to the ownership immediately prior to the IPO (whether such rules exist, I'm unsure).
Not only would you not see a fall, you wouldn't see any movement in the stock for 90 days if trading were suspended (buyers not being able to sell would result in no transactions). This is clearly not true if you look at any IPO. In fact, the possibility to have a run up in the stock price early on is part of the politics of traditional IPO underwriting. The investment bank that underwrites the issue essentially buys all of the stock that will be sold from the company, ensuring that the company receives some fixed amount. The underwriter then sells portions of the stock to major investing concerns at a price fixed higher than what was paid to the company. This spread is the compensation for "insuring" the issue. The stock is initially sold to a small and select group of buyers at this price who anticipate a run-up in the price from the general demand from unwary individual investors.
Everyone early in the chain gets some cut and it is your average joe who generally gets the shaft on the flotation of new issues. In this sense you are correct that IPOs generally don't fail -- the underwriter sets the prices that ensure capital for the firm going public and a profit for the underwriter.
With regard to the business model, who knows. I think this is part of why the IPO wasn't terribly successful (for the people who bought before the decline).
Schwab Global Investing Services is the link you were looking for. I don't know what accounts it is available in, but I would guess it is not available in their regular accounts. There's a phone number there. See my other post in this thread for details re: foreign issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, just give me emacs.
More like "In a corrupt society..."
I meant Brin & Page... but you guys knew that.
It doesn't really matter. As the IPO was structured, the common shareholders have very little say in the business of the company. Brin and Sergey have a different class of stock with overriding voting power essentially.
The only thing you get with the stock is the ability to go along for the ride in terms of speculation and growth in the company. It was made very clear in the IPO prospectus that Google's motto was "do no evil," that Sergey and Brin would continue to be the judges of that, and that the company would seek long-term appreciation over short-term returns.
Any shareholder mounting a suit -- or more likely, some money-grubbing lawyer soliciting for plaintiffs in a class action -- wouldn't have a leg to stand on. A similar case that really informed shareholder rights law was the case of the William Wrigley Jr. Co. when they insisted on certain practices at the baseball park they owned (before they sold it to the trib) that were not in the short term interest of the shareholders. The courts held that the shareholders had purchased the shares and that they approved of the management. From this they concluded that the management were in the best position to determine a course for increasing shareholder value. This gives management a lot of leeway in their actions, especially when these policies are so clearly spelled out in the prospectus.
Google has employees in China. I can imagine how the treatment of these employees might be used to the advantage of the Chinese government if Google is weighing whether to pull out. It would be truly dirty for the government to threaten the welfare of former google employees in discussions with the management, and it would lead to quite an international conundrum. At the same time, it is possible. China isn't exactly known for protecting human rights. Thoughts?
"CSV","can","be"
"quoted","to","allow"
"use","of",","
Quotes can be escaped with \. It's a nice format if you want to do some heavy processing on a spreadsheet. Export to CSV -- do some monkeying around with Perl, import into excel.
This isn't FUD (as in Microsoft funding anti-linux studies), this is just an unsubstantiated rumor -- one which doesn't instill fear.
Here are my tags: apple rim !fud rumor appleberry
Thank you. Smart.
I just finished reading the essay, and he addresses this. He gives the example of people dying (I assume he means from malaria) because of the ban on DDT.
/. not too long ago.
This was actually a topic on
Apparently I do know the very specific meaning of the phrase and its historical origins. I think it is an appropriately short catchall (as a tag) for this sort of posturing that is aimed at providing comfort to the majority in the face of other larger problems.
I propose the tag "breadandcircuses" for articles like this.
Mod +20 Insightful. I should have been more clear -- if the person is truly aligned with either ideology as presented by the parties, steer clear. Of course, there are always people running on tickets who aren't exactly toeing the line.
Or... write in "No Confidence."
... the republicans and the democrats are two sides of the same coin.
It makes no sense to differentiate between the two anymore. Sure there are "polarizing issues" -- like them god damn queers and whatever else is on the docket today -- but for the most part it is fairly certain that regardless of a given particular cause, the cause itself seems to be a restriction on individual liberty.
That's not really fair. It doesn't hurt anyone, and I welcome the idea of another video provider. If someone sends me a link to video, I don't really care if it's google or youtube or now yahoo. If you're publishing videos online you're probably hitting all the major players anyway -- you won't have any trouble finding the video you're looking for at any of the providers.
Sure they won't make money directly off of it... but that's not _my_ problem.
I think that is a decision for the managers of blogs and forums to make. I have no financial interest in WOXY.com, and I think it is a little different than selling VAL/UM and PRoZ^ ck. In addition, they offer free streams and free forums.
The whole point of the NoFollow Attribute wasn't necessarily to immediately decrease blog-spam -- it was to reduce it's detriment to Google and other indexes.
In this sense, it has probably succeeded. Sure a reduction in spam would have been nice, but this is still a nice first step. People always say spam is primarily an economic problem, so removing incentives is a good way to snuff it out in the long run.
I had a similar experience not too long ago when I realized that a web app I had spent nearly a year working on (when I should have been releasing early and often) was over taken by what is now a very prominent service.
In my case though, after reading through my business plan a few times in denial, I came to the realization that I had accomplished a lot and learned a lot but that was all. There's always next time or the time after that.
If I would have wasted any more energy on it I would be in a much worse situation today.
They "own" the innovation? Some people have a really distorted view of the intent and philosophy of so-called Intellectual Property. As Thomas Jefferson so nicely put it: "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
If they think that Google could have actually copied their idea in such a short time, then they are admitting that they had no competitive advantage outside the recourse of litigation. More likely, they developed it concurrently. Google has been making fat web pages as they call them for some time now and I imagine that GWT started as a tool for inhouse projects.
I know there are people with a lot of disdain for cybersquaters here on slashdot.
..."
I recently put two domain names that I own up for sale. They point to an austere page that says essentially: "Welcome. I do not need this domain anymore and if you would like it, I am willing to sell it for $50. Contact me
There is certainly a difference in amount, but my domain names are fairly obscure and (likely) won't be of much interest to anyone. I'm not going to renew them, and my thought is that if anyone would like to have them sooner than the expiration then they can pay me a small amount for that. Hell, a couple of the big registrars still charge around that much for one year.
Maybe this person isn't a cybersquater per se, perhaps he once used this domain and thinks it is worth something. So far as I know, there isn't even a way to relinquish a domain name that is registered some time out into the future back into the commons. Determine what you will pay for the privilege to use the name now rather than later (or instead of another name), and make an offer. Be upfront -- "This is what it is worth to me, this is what I will pay, final offer, let me know." Depending on your project, maybe it is even worth what he is asking.
If you have a firm value in your mind and do not pay more than that value, you'll win -- regardless of whether you get the domain.
Removal of a person's heart to extract stem cells from it STOPS A BEATING HEART!!!!!
that is all.
So true. Even American companies are "going private" (below 300 shareholders) to avoid regulatory burdens.
There are generally not restrictions on selling the stock after the IPO. You might be thinking of some SEC rules regarding changes to the ownership immediately prior to the IPO (whether such rules exist, I'm unsure).
Not only would you not see a fall, you wouldn't see any movement in the stock for 90 days if trading were suspended (buyers not being able to sell would result in no transactions). This is clearly not true if you look at any IPO. In fact, the possibility to have a run up in the stock price early on is part of the politics of traditional IPO underwriting. The investment bank that underwrites the issue essentially buys all of the stock that will be sold from the company, ensuring that the company receives some fixed amount. The underwriter then sells portions of the stock to major investing concerns at a price fixed higher than what was paid to the company. This spread is the compensation for "insuring" the issue. The stock is initially sold to a small and select group of buyers at this price who anticipate a run-up in the price from the general demand from unwary individual investors.
Everyone early in the chain gets some cut and it is your average joe who generally gets the shaft on the flotation of new issues. In this sense you are correct that IPOs generally don't fail -- the underwriter sets the prices that ensure capital for the firm going public and a profit for the underwriter.
With regard to the business model, who knows. I think this is part of why the IPO wasn't terribly successful (for the people who bought before the decline).
For the record:
End of Transmission
Schwab Global Investing Services is the link you were looking for. I don't know what accounts it is available in, but I would guess it is not available in their regular accounts. There's a phone number there. See my other post in this thread for details re: foreign issues.