Google Chooses An Underwriter For Upcoming IPO 300
PenguinSix writes "Bloomberg and a bunch of others are reporting that Google has hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to arrange its initial public offering. This follows literally years of rumors and stories about a Google IPO. About a third of Mountain View, California-based Google may be sold in the IPO, giving the company a market value of about $12 billion, the bankers said." Google has become so invaluable to many people (like me) that they could probably raise just as much money with a blackmail scheme.
IPO: It's Probably Overpriced (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again, if offered a chance to buy some, and assuming it's not being done by auction, sure, I'll take some. And I'll flip it the first day. Without shame. Bring it on!
Google - "Pineapple-Upsidedown-Beans" (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd prefer to see Google sell shares right over the internet through their website, maybe allow you to buy via an online payment service or other immediate means, such as credit card (with a validation period or something like that to prevent fraud.) I'd probably buy a few shares just 'cause I think they'd look cool in frames and would make great geek gifts! :-)
Google's geek following is strong, it would be a shame if a bunch of suits were owners. Good idea to keep it to only 1/3, but how long will that last?
GOO appears available as a stock ticker symbol.
Regarding blackmail, how so? Hasn't Google already been under the scope for fixing searches? Seems a dodgy thing to do once you're publicly traded, but fine as long as you're privately held.
I want it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Even at the possible 7% mentioned, I'm sure it wouldn't take long to make a lot of money considering how ridiculously well-established google is in so many homes and businesses. One wonders how inflated they could wind up looking though. Could the google stigma raise their own market value above what it will be able to maintain? I guess this is why they're selling that 33% and not 49.
Damon,
Suck. (Score:0, Interesting)
This is going to get ugly. (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.google-sucks.org/ [google-sucks.org]
They're also blocking out blogs in favor of commercial sites, not to mention the spamvertising, blatant manipulation of searches, and the introduction of the google toolbar spyware.
But that's just the beginning. When a significant portion of the company is no longer controlled by the founders and their vision, and is co-opted by a greedy, profit-driven board of directors, things are going to get much worse. Instead of being a fair and useful tool for the community, all the creators will care about is monopoly and money.
Google, welcome to the wonderful world of turbo-capitalism.
Stupid move (Score:1, Interesting)
Law of nature (Score:4, Interesting)
But maybe I will still buy some if I had the money to spare...
They might as well... (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, since the SEC is forcing them to behave like a publicly held company and publish quarterly reports, they might as well take the money and run -- much as we'd like them to remain privately held.
Who are they planning to buy? (Score:5, Interesting)
First explanation, their VCs have decided that now is the time to make some money and move on (markets looking up and such). Boring, but very likely.
Or... Google wants to buy somebody. They see an opportunity to do something big. We thought maybe they want to buy a big media company and become the defacto place to buy digital media. Everybody and their cousin seems to be starting online music stores. Maybe Google figures they can leverage their infrastructure and search market share to sell people music in the same place they search. But just another online music store is also boring. What if they bought MGM? Or a big slice of Vivendi? Music and movies.
Think about it.
IPO == VC Exit Plan (Score:4, Interesting)
For all of you hyping Google's IPO, just ask yourself these questions: Who has the most to gain by Google's IPO? And does that entity have any vested interest in Google's continued success? Seriously, what purpose is there to Google's IPO other than paying off Kleiner Perkins?
This is probably the debate that has been going on inside Google for quite some time now (just my educated guess):
Re:This is going to get ugly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Google Sucks Search on Google [google.com]
Re:say good bye (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:IPO: It's Probably Overpriced (Score:1, Interesting)
What exactly do you mean by "assuming it's not being done by auction"?
It's being sold on the stock market someone would naturally assume, which is albeit a complex auction; it is what I would categorize as an auction.
What do you think makes the price of a stock go up or down? Essentially when people want to buy the stock it goes up and the more people are willing to pay for it, the higher it goes. When people won't buy the stock for the offered price then it drops until people will buy the stock...
While this is not the Economics 101 definition, I think I speak for more than myself...
-Anticranium
Financials and dutch auction (Score:5, Interesting)
Another thought, the smart thing to do would be a dutch auction, where every interested party posts blind bids in advance for lots of stock, with the highest bids being filled first, then next-highest, etc, until all the stock is sold. This means Google gets every penny they should and prevents investment bankers from underpricing the IPO to create a first-day "pop" in share value, where the IB and favored clients get to flip the stock for the difference between IPO price and pop price.
1/3rd ownership vs Duties... (Score:1, Interesting)
An interesting question is, even if the founder still control a majority of the company, once they are public, aren't they obliged to maximize returns? For example, they could hardly say to the shareholders, well "Fsck You, we're donating all this to Open Source movement and gifting the remaining cash to Linux". Nope. So, how does going public open them up to Fiduciary Responsibility to the shareholders, and how much are they open?
The problem is (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus, while the original owners will maintain the appearance of control, the value of the company will fall into the realm of public opinion. As a result, in order to maintain company health it becomes necessary to start bullshitting (considering public opinion is based heavily on marketing)...
Et tu Google.
Googles assets and liabilities? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure can't be their hardware. Supposed to be just a big pile of PCs and mass storage devices.
Actually, Google might even wind up in a serious liability situation as regards copyright questions for the cached and HTML versions that effectively bypass the real owners of the information.
Okay, by acclamation Google is the most useful of the search engines and the one most of us do use first, but $12 billion of first? I still can't figure it.
On the other hand, if I was allowed to print up some little papers with fancy scrolls and say they were worth $12 billion, I suppose I might consider doing it. Truth be told.
How about a P2P search engine? (Score:3, Interesting)
Will Google's employees retire? (Score:3, Interesting)
The other side is that while most full-timers at Google have either shares or options, they probably did not amount to much compared to their salary. If those shares become worth ten times their value, and the employee decides to cash out, they will probably gain a few years salary. That might be wrong in this case. With a market cap of $36 billion, even a few shares may be enough to retire. Most companies plan at least 10% of their stock to cover employee options. $3.6 billion / 650 employees gives an average of $5.5 million. On the good side (for us), maybe most of those options are not vested yet.
The big winners are the ones who started the company or invested cash for shares. The investors should not matter to operations, and the founders have already made enough to retire if that was their preference.
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Here is a link [com.com] to the story that Google might be forced to IPO that I should have included in my last post. 500 share or option holders and $10 million in assets forces an IPO.
Here is a link to the actual rules. [sec.gov] See "Corporate Reporting".