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Google Businesses The Almighty Buck The Internet

Google Creators Interviewed by Playboy 236

Posted by CowboyNeal from the shaky-ground dept.
Cristiano wrote in to say that an interview with the creators of Google is appearing in the latest Playboy Magazine. That in and of itself is of little note, until one realizes that the issue of Playboy in question is already en route to subscribers and hits newsstands tomorrow, the same day that their IPO auction begins. News.com.com speculates that the SEC may be interested, since this could be a breach of the "quiet period" companies must endure before going public. It may also be nothing but a mistake in scheduling, but it has cast doubts on Google's IPO for some.
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Google Creators Interviewed by Playboy More

Google Creators Interviewed by Playboy

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  • Go for it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SteveXE ( 641833 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:22PM (#9954762)
    Google+playboy a geeks wet dream!

  • Hey... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gricholson75 ( 563000 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:23PM (#9954767) Homepage
    I only buy it for the tech articles.

  • Google? In Playboy? (Score:5, Funny)

    by GFLPraxis ( 745118 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:23PM (#9954768) Homepage Journal
    Bring on the booble jokes...

  • Finally (Score:4, Funny)

    by cdgod ( 132891 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:23PM (#9954778) Homepage
    I can now tell my wife:

    "See honey, I buy playboy for the interviews"
  • You might have a bigger problem than Google and the SEC ;)

  • That's a first! (Score:5, Funny)

    by unboring ( 697886 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:26PM (#9954792) Homepage
    and this might be one of the only times when geeks are mentioned in the same breath with playboy, hot models, and boobs!

  • Methinks they don't want to go public. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:27PM (#9954800)
    All the controversy just make more people hear about Google.

    It's been said before (by VCs in my last startup) that an IPO is three things:

    1. A funding event (which they don't need), and
    2. A PR event (which is always welcome)
    In the meeting they said that, I voluteered that it's also a liquidation event; but they suggested that that doesn't matter to anyone important.

    Google's IPO is a PR event more than anything; and if this adds controversy, that just makes for better PR.

  • Interview from April (Score:5, Interesting)

    by otisg ( 92803 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:27PM (#9954802) Homepage Journal
    Note that this interview was done in April - before they filed for IPO.... maybe that makes it a little less difficult for them.
    • Well, it was about a week before they filed for the IPO. It isn't like they had no idea they were going to do an IPO a week ahead of time, so it doesn't really make it less difficult.

    • Re:Interview from April (Score:5, Informative)

      by cloudturtle ( 260857 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:22PM (#9955111)
      Actually, if the interview mentions anything about the IPO it would be a violation of the securities law. You cannot advertise an impending IPO, whether or not you have you have submited an application to the SEC.

      Also, the timing of the articles release is only important if it occurs before the the SEC has approved the IPO. Once the IPO is approved (the prospectus is kosher and all) the companies are allowed to advertise.

      Also, since Google should be a 12(g) company -- they have to report to the SEC becuase they have over 500 shareholders in a class of stock and a super-bung-load of revenue more than necessary to meet the requirement -- i'm pretty sure that as long as this interview is typical of other interviews they give it would be all good as long as they don't specifically plug the IPO. A reporting company is allowed to keep thier normal amount of advertising and such before an impending IPO, they just are not supposed to inflate thier publicity efforts before they get SEC approval for the offering.

      You know it is sad, i'm procrastinating studing for my Securities Regulation final by blabering about Securities Regulation on Slashdot. And if you learn anything from the above post it should be that I am NOT qualified to give legal advice.

      • The ambiguity here is that while they fail to actually discuss the IPO, they go into quite a bit of detail about the history of the company, their goals, etc. In other words, its a peice that really does advertise Google. Personally, I'm not a lawyer but I think this was a poor choice on Google's part.

        Incidentally, I didn't buy Playboy, but rather heard the facts as they were presented on NPR this afternoon. Not that there's anything wrong with porn - far from it - but Playboy is beyond a waste of mon
      • also, since Google should be a 12(g) company -- they have to report to the SEC becuase they have over 500 shareholders in a class of stock and a super-bung-load of revenue

        Is that the official SEC term? I could've sworn is was mega-bung-load of revenue.

        -Ted

        • Yeah, i guess i was a little lose with my language there.

          SEC Rule 12(g)(1) provides the criteria for Section 12(g) -- note the difference, 12(g)(1) is an administrative rule but 12(g) is legislative from the Securities Act of 1934 -- which is that a company with over 500 shareholders in a single class of stock and over $10 million in assets has to report (even if they are not traded on a national exchange).

          In my parent post i couldn't remember the exact amount off hand -- very bad the day before the fi

        • No, silly, that's the metric term.
    • And that means it's not the Google exec's fault because they can't control when the article hits the newstands. Playboy had the interview at sat on it, and the actual statements were made before the start of the quiet period.
    • submitted and rejected today:

      Business 2.0 is running a column [business2.com] that speculates that the negative publicity surrounding the Google IPO [google.com] may be part of a Wall Street campaign to stop more companies from using the Dutch Auction [wikipedia.org] system and bypassing the banks. It quotes such people as Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com [overstock.com], who relates what happened to them when they decided to follow the dutch auction method for their IPO.

      Suchetha

  • Hey! (Score:5, Funny)

    by oasis3582 ( 698323 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:27PM (#9954804)
    Let's have a race to see how many people can make the same joke in the first 100 posts!!!

    • Re:Hey! (Score:2, Funny)

      by endx7 ( 706884 )
      Let's have a race to see how many people can make the same joke in the first 100 posts!!!

      We should have a race to see how many people make the same joke in the first hundred posts!

  • before the jokes start.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    best interview with kurt vonnegut ever is his one in playboy--yes, i DID read it for the article. interestingly, i hear they let him make up most of the questions himself.

  • Slashdotting Time... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Roguelazer ( 606927 ) <Roguelazer@nOSpam.gmail.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:31PM (#9954831) Homepage Journal
    Okay, it's time to show some serious geek/nerd muscle. Let's slashdot the biggest prize of all- PLAYBOY!

  • The SEC Shouldn't Worry (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:31PM (#9954839)
    I don't see why the SEC is concerned, I know plenty well you guys don't buy them for the articles; but then again, neither do I.
    • "I know plenty well you guys don't buy them for the articles; but then again, neither do I. Ya I'm a girl - do you have a problem with it, bub?"

      No, but what I have a problem with is girls who make assumptions and generalizations. The fact that this got modded insightful is beyond me. Playboy has, and has always had, quality articles and interviews that are both interesting and informative.

      Yeah, they have some great looking women as well, and you find it in the porno section, but honestly, I'd buy the mag

      • Actually getting it for anything but the articles is a waste of time... It really doesn't have much in the way of porn (or pr0n, for the speach disabled). There might be 3 neked chicks, stylistically posed, and covered in enough air-brushing that they no longer resemble humans.

        The articles are good though, shallow, but good. Much better than Maxim, which is only Cosmo for men.

  • My Firewall at work - I am in for trouble (Score:4, Funny)

    by SmoothCriminal ( 470234 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:33PM (#9954851) Homepage
    I may be in soup as I just visited playboy.com

    Being tracked for reading an article about google (well it was from playboy)

  • What was he deal with the journalist? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:35PM (#9954861) Homepage
    You have to wonder if they perhaps had a deal with the journalist or the magazine not to publish until after the IPO happened, and then they decided to print anyway.

    I have seen this happen in science reporting, unfortunately. A journalist wanted to know about some current work at our department, and got the interview on condition that she wait to publish for a week, until a set of experiments on volunteers had been done (so the volunteers couldn't read the interview and get clued in on what the purpose was). She ignored the deal and ran it just a couple of days later ("we really needed a piece that day"). The experiments had to be postponed for six months and new volunteers had to be found.

    Moral: never, ever, tell a journalist about anything with other than historical interest. If any aspect of your work or personal life could be harmed by the timing or manner in which something is published, don't share it. If it is ongoing work, don't speak about it - let your papers do the speaking. Another good, hard-won lesson is: don't make guesses, and don't share your beliefs or estimates unless they are very well covered by your data already. If you feel the need to add "perhaps", or "in my view", or "one possibility is" - just keep quiet. Far too often, that conditional will be dropped once the piece sees print, and your personal opinion will suddenly stand there as scientific fact.

    My rant seems to have gone offtopic a bit; feel free to moderate down.

  • I'm not investing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by antikarma ( 804155 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:38PM (#9954876)
    Are they trying to commit corporate suicide? First they "may have" issued 23 million shares of stock to their own employees illegally and now they "may have" breached the quiet period. Do they even know what they're doing?

    • Re:I'm not investing (Score:2, Insightful)

      by iammaxus ( 683241 )
      You know, I thought the same thing, at first. But then I realized that I think these guys are smart, and not just in computer science. One speculation I have is that they are trying to compensate for the predicted over-pricing of the stock that the auction-style IPO will create. Google doesn't want their stock dropping immediately after the IPO, so why not devalue it a bit prior the IPO.I don't think these kinds of tactics are smart in the long run, but I'm pretty confident there are some good reasons be
    • Google is not trying to be corporate, really. That doesn't excuse the lost share or what have you, but you have to understand that the boys really want to do things their way, if that means giving interviews with Playboy that get published the day of their anaylst-puzzling IPO, then damn the torpedoes.

      Will they survive doing things their own way? Let's hope so.

  • disapointing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Punto ( 100573 ) <puntob@gmai l . com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:46PM (#9954921) Homepage
    I thought there'd be at least some pictures of their Vice President of Corporate Marketing [google.com], but it's just an article..

    who the hell reads playboy for the articles anyway?

  • Link to Interview excerpt (Score:2, Informative)

    by macz ( 797860 )
    Here is a link to part of the interview:
    http://www.playboy.com/magazine/interview.html [playboy.com]
    FYI: 2 time Olympian High Jumper, Amy Acuff is on the cover.
    Obligatory Dumb Question: How the flying F**K does a Playboy cover girl do the high jump? ...Oh wait, I answered my own question...

  • They just did it so that they could up their page ranking on words such as "pr0n".

  • New Google Art? (Score:5, Funny)

    by XipX ( 615675 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:52PM (#9954957)
    Am I the only one imagining a new "seasonal" logo for the "oo" in google?

  • This isn't necessarily against SEC rules! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by six11 ( 579 ) * <johnsogg@@@cmu...edu> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:52PM (#9954958) Homepage
    Looking through the comments, it seems to be populated by teenagers titillated at the prospect of having geek content in a softcore porn magazine. But the interesting bit here (as the original poster stated) isn't that they're in Playboy but that they're in Playboy during their quiet period.

    Given that nobody here on Slashdot (I am assuming that Playboy employees aren't kernel hackers, and Page and Brin have better things to do than blow time on /.) has read the full article, I think it is a bit sensationalist to instantly go jumping to the conclusion that this is somehow a breach of SEC rules. They would be breaking the rules if they made forward-looking statements such as earnings or market share, or if they discussed new products and research. From what it looks like from the blurb on the linked article, they are talking about history, which they're allowed to do. They're allowed to talk about their childhood, they're allowed to talk about technology, they're allowed to talk about their lifestyle. They're just not allowed to pump up all the cool things that we haven't seen yet.

    Anyway, try not to jump the gun on this. Wait till it comes out before you decide they're being evil.

  • Nude Pictures (Score:3, Funny)

    by Space_Soldier ( 628825 ) <not4_u@hotmail.com> on Thursday August 12, 2004 @09:53PM (#9954963)
    Please do NOT show their nude pictures!

  • Playboy link (Score:4, Funny)

    by shadowmatter ( 734276 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:02PM (#9955014)
    Because the story submitter absent-mindedly forgot, here's the link to Playboy [playboy.com]. ... Like you didn't know it already, lonely geek! (I bet all the images on the site are "mysteriously" pre-cached.)

    - sm

  • Comes from the sealed bid auction that lowers (substantially) the usual profit taking for the IPO backer?

    from an article on slate:
    "Google's IPO price will thus be set naturally by all interested market participants, not artificially by underwriters. Google--and not well-connected investors--will receive the full benefit of investors' enthusiasm for the stock. To add insult to the injury of the chastened investment bankers, Google has decreed that it'll only pay a 3 percent underwriting fee."

    http://slate.m

  • GooglePorn on the way (Score:3, Interesting)

    by anandpur ( 303114 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:10PM (#9955056)
    googleporn.com [whois.net]

  • Shark jumping 101 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 3l1za ( 770108 )
    If it wasn't the Dutch-style auction that marks the beginning of the end, it will surely be this...
  • I always seemed to get my magazines a month ahead. The February one comes in the middle of January, the May edition comes in April. Obviosly the magazines are written pretty far in advance and mailed out pretty early.

    Maybe an honest mistake by someone who didn't consider that most magazines arrive early?

    • Mine (Finescale Modeler and Model Railroader) both do this. (They are, I admit, published by the same company and usually show up on the same day.) I wondered about this myself. Somewhere, I read that the date on the cover is the date the magazine is taken off newsstands ... but that seems odd. You would think that the month on the cover is the one in which it appears on stands and goes to subscribers' houses.

      Here's a weird one: FSM does not get published in August, but MR does. I've never personally seen
      • A Dutch electronics magazine does (used to do?) the same, no August issue. Instead, they would send out an extra big July issue, and every year that issue would have a collection of 100 small(ish) projects to build. I used to buy it semi-regularly, depending on the articles. When my interest in electronics started to wane I stopped buying the magazine, except in July. After a couple of years even that stopped, but by then computers had become the "in" thing :)

  • Booble (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ilan Volow ( 539597 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:20PM (#9955097) Homepage
    Given the nature of the magazine, I have to wonder whether interviewer will bring up the inevitable Booble [slashdot.org] controversy.

  • Playboy has interviews? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Playboy has interviews?

    I just buy it for the hot nude women...

  • Wo-ho! (Score:3, Funny)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:29PM (#9955153) Homepage
    Google and nake chicks in the same magazine. There's something karmic about that. With so many people using Google to search for naked chicks it just seems...

    ...appropriate.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChangeOnInstall ( 589099 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @10:32PM (#9955172)
    ...32,000 techies lost their jobs at various major software development companies on Friday, August 13th, allegedly for visiting a site contianing pornographic material. An anonymous vice president of information technology at a Fortune 500 company had this to say: "This represents a great step in removing these future pedophiles from our workforce. In our analyses we found that 86% of pedophiles had been exposed to pornography before the age of 18. Plain and simple, this proves that pornography is a gateway drug to sexual deviancy. Thank goodness we found these freaks of nature before they could cause any real harm to our enterprise."
  • ..."jumped the shark"? I think so. Sure, geeks will never use Microsoft's new search engine, but others will. Most will say that Microsoft's search will be biased and full of adds. But there are some that say Google is already there. Sure, for geeks, we may not see it as much because when we search for deep technical subjects, there just are not going to be that many spammers who have focused on being top Google in that subject. But to the average Googler, it's not that useful anymore because of all the
    • What are you searching for on Google that leads you to nothing but spam?

      Maybe I'm atypical... OK, I know I'm atypical... but I don't have that problem.

      I suppose if your typical Google search is for the celebrity de jour you might get spam (and I've noticed the warez sites* and such are pretty spammy, but that's a fairly accurate reflection of their real state in the world!), but for anything of consequence I don't see spam.

      *: Which I peruse for NoCD cracks for software I legitimately own. Seriouly. It ma

  • Stirring up trouble (Score:3, Interesting)

    by digitaltraveller ( 167469 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @11:40PM (#9955509) Homepage
    This could just be someone on Wall Street stirring up trouble for Google.

    There have been a few articles in the trade press about Wall Street being pissed off at (horror) being treated like normal people and missing out on the customary level of graft that accompanies high profile IPO's.

    Microsoft is also working behind the scenes to try and throttle their IPO success. (Remember Microsoft's recent news portal unveiling)?

    Larry and Sergey get alot of props though from both computer geeks (for linux) and financial nerds (for following Warren Buffett's advice).

    I think the IPO is going to go well.

  • An apt typo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by froz ( 69551 ) on Thursday August 12, 2004 @11:54PM (#9955584)

    Go ogle it.

  • RTFA (Score:3, Funny)

    by drtomaso ( 694800 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @12:19AM (#9955710)

    Finally a slashdot post where I can RTFA.

  • Google is worthless now! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zoid.com ( 311775 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @01:42AM (#9956083) Homepage Journal
    Try to find a driver got a siemens 1022 USB device. What do you find? 40 pages of resellers for amazon. Google has become freakin worthless.

    • And this is Google's fault because...? (Score:4, Informative)

      by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Friday August 13, 2004 @08:37AM (#9957460)

      In general the best way to find an updated driver is to contact the hardware vendor. If the hardware is old and no longer supported by the vendor, you may be out of luck. If not, and you were looking for a third party driver, be aware that such a driver might not exist.

      However, I think what is happening here is that you are trying to use the product in an environment - like Linux - where the device might or might not be supported. You probably bought an item and are trying to use it in an unsupported manner; now you're getting mad because Google won't help you find a non-existent driver.

      Besides, you should learn not to exaggerate. A Google search for 'siemens usb 1022 driver' did return some retail sites. Here's a hint, Sparky: shopping sites/pages generally include the word 'price'. Exclude that from the Google search and you get ~260 pages of what appear to be primarily hints, guides, and how-tos.

      In conclusion: Google is fine; you don't know how to use it.
    • True. I've been trying to find reviews of a car steroe head unit, gave up after wading through pages of hundreds of those "price comparison" things.

  • Read the full text of the Playboy interview [sec.gov], compliments of the SEC. (Warning: It is a very long HTML file; wait for it to load. If your browser (such as IE) loses the fragment anchor, do a text search to find the beginning of Appendix B.) Of course, if you want the pretty pictures, you're going to have to buy it [playboy.com].

    I've also picked up the Google/Playboy issue [sopef.org] on my flagship blog.

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