Google Plans an IPO 144
Rich Jones writes "According to this story over at the BBC
every geek's favorite search engine is contemplating an IPO. " Hopefully this wouldn't effect the lean mean searching that I've come to love from the unquestioned king of search engines. Now that the hype surrounding IPOs has fizzled, its nice to see a company that looks as good as Google thinking about it.
Google Has a Problem (Score:1)
Best would probably be to bring back the articles that match 3 out of 4 words or 6 out of 8, but those searches are too expensive.
Time to go IPO before everyone else notices.
IPO ? Bad move. Issue a Bond or borrow from Bank. (Score:1)
and Wall St pundits.
This allows them to get off the BS treadmill and go back to focusing on their business rather than the value of their stock price.
If they need money to expand and are confident
of their business borrow money from the Bank.
Re:Make $$$ FAST (Score:1)
~~~
Re:It bothers me... (Score:1)
Not so simple (Score:1)
Privately held corps are fine and dandy. For example Quark (of QuarkXPress fame) is privately held, and makes gobs of money.
There are two primary reasons for taking a company public -- one, for financing reasons; two, for compensations reasons (also known as "the company needs bux" and "the founders need bux").
At a certain point, a large company wants to expand their operations, either by buying an existing company, inventing it in-house, or expanding on their current market base. This costs money, and generally a privately held corps has precious little cash on hand to do this -- the tax laws being what they are, you don't want to make too much profit or you'll be hammered at the end of your fiscal year. So, a company either goes public, allows buy-in from investors (selling private sharess to select few), or gets a loan.
In tech businesses, though, a lot of companies were founded on the principle that the early employees will accept stock in return for a fat salary -- this *requires* an IPO, with everybody hoping for a big first-day rally to make them instant millionaires. This does happen, and it's a workable strategy -- but like the arms race, it works best when you're the only one doing it. Since every dot-com in the world was doing this, the concept has sort of lost its shine to an increasingly jaded workforce.
I would argue that Google going public isn't a good thing, nor a bad thing. I'm sure their accountant-hackers have run the numbers and established that an IPO is the best way to get to their goals (whether that be search engines or World Domination). I would also argue that a publicly-held corporation is no more likely to be a problem than a publicly-elected governemt (much less, actually, since a publicly owned corporation can't force you to buy something, whereas a publicly-elected government can; witness enforced car-insurance laws).
I agree that thousands of small private companies is better than 4 large public ones, for the same reasons it's better to have many strains of apple trees, rather than just Red Delicious -- one virus and we've got no apples. Diversification is good! But those big corporations do have a place -- it's much easier to deal with a handful of options for phone service than 100 different vendors; witness DSL's torpid deployment and desultory service for a microcosm of this.
Be careful saying "Since when is what is good for stockholders good for America?" -- I'm pretty arrogant and opinionated, but I'm not willing to say I know what's good for America. The best answer I could give would be "for her people to remain Free". And that means there will be some large, publicly held corporations doing both good and nefarious deeds. Our job is to defend against the latter and celebrate the former.
It has something to do with... (Score:2)
I use to play it for hours!!
You are welcome!
Re:Hmmmm (Score:1)
Just because the tech stocks seem down right now, you also have to remember that probably more then half the failed IPO's failed because the companies themselves were miserable and worthless, the market saw this after the hype, and the stock(s) was adjusted accordingly.
Google on the other hand, is a young company with something actually of value.
Re:Beta image searching tech! (Score:1)
Re:Do what O'Reilly does. (Score:2)
I dunno about this one. An IPO is just securing a round of funding from a good deal of investors; how is this different from a private company securing a round of funding from venture capitalists?
Re:Some thoughts on this rumor... (Score:2)
I don't believe that eyeballs translate into money. I worked at NBCi, for god's sake -- I left when I realized that they'd never stop trying to monetize eyeballs (XOOM, which monetized things by actual revenue, is where some of Google's net ops crew came from, while I'm on the topic of failed-portal refugees). The company I now work for cares about profits, profits, and profits -- we only bother keeping hit counts in order to bill for bytes transmitted. So please do understand that I'm with you on this.
I never bought Yahoo stock. I bought Foundry stock, and Merck stock, and bonds, because the value of these instruments is derived from profitable institutions. I suggest that anyone who doesn't understand this stick with either IBM stock or stuffing their cash under a mattress
As for momentum, it bought me a truck during the Great Internet Tulip Craze, so I'm not unhappy about it. I just don't believe in it for the long haul
As of the moment, one of my friends who works there has heard nothing to indicate that this rumor is anything but bullshit, so I'm not losing any sleep yet.
Some thoughts on this rumor... (Score:5)
No company that relies on banner ads [google.com] for revenue is ever going to be successful again, not even when they provide the value that Google's do (they're cheap, and work pretty well, but that's not a real business model, kids). I'll stand by that prediction -- not too brave of me.
GOOGLE MAKES MONEY LICENSING USE OF THEIR ENGINE.
Yahoo! pays to use it [yahoo.com] (although they didn't buy access to the entire page index, so a direct Google search will often give better results). So do about 50 other major companies. When I say 'their engine' I mean the many Googleclusters in Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and (I believe) Herndon, not just the software.
Some of my friends and ex-coworkers work there -- "Nobody at Google ever quits" they say, and aside from contractors, this appears to be true. It is a wonderful work environment [google.com] and they have filled their cubicles with Microsoft Research caliber PhD's and ex-professors. They are working on image retrieval technologies [google.com] (not truly useful yet) and have pretty much cornered the search-engine-ASP market [google.com]. (In fact, since I last talked to anyone at Google about this, they've added ANOTHER 70 PARTNERS!)
The technology rules -- I have converted every single employee at my current company (far from an IPO, but profitable nonetheless) to using the Google Toolbar [google.com] because it saves so much time. (and they in turn have converted most of their acquaintances...) If things continue this way, not only will they be an attractive investment, but vast numbers of potential investors may habitually use Google the way they use Microsoft's site. If things go REALLY well, even Microsoft may end up using Google for their search services. That's damn good awareness. And that is why I say...
I STILL HOPE THEY DO NOT IPO YET.
Not just because I doubt my erstwhile coworkers will cut me in for friends-and-family ;-) but because the market is atrocious and I, like (I pray) most /. readers, would want to see them rewarded for superior technology and hard work, rather than having a fair-to-middling IPO due to the .com spectres. If revenues continue to increase (and I believe they will -- Google's search engine is lightyears ahead of new entrants like Teoma [teoma.com] due to its already being deployed and well tested), a Google IPO in a year or two would probably be a huge hit, as it may catch the economy coming OUT OF a dip.
Marc, Shawn, Chris, and everyone else at Google, you're doing a great job, and I will buy into the company's IPO either way. But I hope Doerr and Brin and Page, or whoever would be making the decision, decide to hold off a little bit!
Re:Inacuracies in the BBC Article (Score:2)
There are few people in the world less technical than the BBC web team :0)
(That was a joke. The BBC serve up a non-trivial volume of traffic every day themselves).
A few thoughts. (Score:1)
The US is not the World, despite every attempt.
Sure, Google will do well from this IPO. It'll earn lots of money, and might even put some of it into services like Deja, which is barely functional, these days.
But in a few years time, will Google be any more useful than Altavista? If not, then the investors would be better throwing their cash into an R&D house that might actually produce some long-term return.
Google about to go under? (Score:2)
effect (Score:5)
Actually, I hope that it continues to effect that sort of searching, and that an IPO doesn't affect it negatively....
Re:Hey ABC! (Score:1)
I saw a contestant not long ago call his lifeline up and have him type a question into some kind of search engine. He spelled everything out and you could hear the guy typing in the background. Unfortunately for him it didn't return any results before the call ended.
The look on the host's face was absolutely priceless.
I'd bet that the service they tried to use was Google.
Not to knock Google, (Score:1)
Re:A few thoughts. (Score:4)
Some other dead ends:
You get the idea... often a sub-optimal but very well understood approach will be significantly more usefull then a theoretically superior but unworkable approach. With the rate of change of the internet, I don't know how else you could possibly keep up to date.
I am amazed at how good a job Google does every time I search. It's performance and accuracy are nothing short of astounding if you understand the nature and size of the solution space they cover.
Bill
Fix "Google Groups" (Score:2)
They totally broke the USENET access engine they purchased from deja.com. Deja was so much better. It allowed expansion by thread, advanced filtering and searching based on the group, personal posting history, marking threads to watch, etc.
Now they're "Google Groups" and they have just recently enabled **trumpets sound** POSTING!
Re:Hey ABC! (Score:1)
I doubt it - Google never seems to take that long to return me any results. Maybe he'd be a millionaire if he had used Google...
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Re:Doomed for failure (Score:1)
You're comparing to more than just .coms, though - Transmeta isn't really a .com, just a new IPO of a hardware company. The IPO market is bad, and not just for .coms.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Re:Inacuracies in the BBC Article (Score:2)
Re:Inacuracies in the BBC Article (Score:3)
So the BBC seems to be thinking 'cluster'='large server' perhaps. Of course we know that isn't quite right, but nontechnical people might not understand the difference.
Profitable (Score:3)
Now lets just hope that they don't become yet another stock value management company.
The question that begs an answer is... (Score:1)
The obvious answer is money. But if that's the case, what does Google need more money for?
Re:Beta image searching tech! (Score:2)
Well. (Score:2)
I feel that this is their right; they built google, those who backed it so far deserve to make money off it if they can.
However, once this becomes public, any particular morals or ways in which the original people wanted to run it go out the door. The shareholders have a right to demand value, and that means google will have to sacrifice whatever it wants in order to increase revenue; it won't be enough to simply employ X people paid Y dollars a year in prepetuity; they will HAVE to show increased profits and growth. THat's the downfall of many public companies; the fact that, once public, they MUST grow. Even if they don't every attempt will be made to grow them until they die. It is not acceptable for a public company to sit and just keep up with inflation, and employ it's people; that's their fundamental problem.
Re:In the beginning... (Score:2)
Well said. And I can't help but have a feeling of dis-ease over the prospect of Google IPO-ing. Because, remember, when it's publically held, Google's emphasis will invariably shift from being the best search engine around to being the most profitable search engine around -- because that's the only reason most investors are going to buy the stock.
Re:Beta image searching tech! (Score:2)
...but Larry's a linguist! (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure Google has already been effected. Personally, I hope they're not affected.
Wait a minute... could it be that the Slashdot ubergeeks are unable to translate their mastery of the Pathetically Eclectic Rubbish Lister into the eclectic, quirky English language?
The question is... (Score:1)
Re:The question is... (Score:2)
http://www.galstar.com/~jmccorm/review.html
It seems they decided to publish some of their emails on the web for some boneheaded reason. It explains the story fairly well.
Re:Profitable (Score:1)
Google is a great service, and I'd rather pay maybe a yearly subscription to keep it running (if every user payed $10 a year or so). On the other hand, it's one of the few more recent internet developments (excluding the spate of startups from 1995 onward that flopped) that has a decent solid service, and it's one of the few I would pay to use, but without the consumer and user of Google paying a fee (like normal companies), the IPO would probably get *some* money, but basing income off ad revenue would make it a one-off lump sum payment, and they are not guaranteed a more stable source of money as if they simply charged a small fee.
One thing I like is the ability to search a domain; I live in Ireland and it's great to use a decent search engine for the .ie domain.
Re:Completely off topic (Score:1)
There a load of repossessed cars, etc., (6x the amount in March 2001 compared to March 2000 I hear) probably from the folk that figured $80000 a year for web design is a normal salary, only never realising that they would actually be lucky to even get that one year and $80000, but there you go.
Re:A few thoughts. (Score:4)
Google uses keyword searching. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Keyword searching is a Dead-End Technology. It scales badly, throws too many false positives and too many false negatives, and makes no allowance for international variations in spelling.
Keyword searching by itself is a dead end. But Google isn't just keyword searching. Google's real strength is it's ability to distill information from links to and from web pages. Google effectively makes ever web page author an intelligent indicer. Google pulls out previously ignored data on the value of a web page. In short, Google works.
Keyword searching scales badly? Compared to what? There is no magical way to avoid looking at every page and doing some form of analysis. Every search engine needs to pay roughly the same price to build up their data set. As for searching, quickly collecting results from an optimized database is fast. Database work is a heavily studied and optimized area. Search cost should be sub-linear to the size of the database.
International variations? If you mean regional variations on the same language, it's solvable by keyword equivalence lists. Many search engines already know to search for misspellings and different conjugations. Again, what would you suggest to replace it?
But in a few years time, will Google be any more useful than Altavista? Google is already more useful than Altavista (in most areas). All Altavista can do is catch up to Google. Meanwhile Google can explore further improvements. If Google is foolish enough to sit on their laurels, they'll be overtaken by someone with a clever idea.
If not, then the investors would be better throwing their cash into an R&D house that might actually produce some long-term return.
Investors don't look three years into the future. They might see two years. Probably only one. Long term research is a fundamentally risky investment. Many times you don't develop something useful, you just discover things that don't work. Don't expect investors to sink money into big maybes.
All in all, it's a bit silly to predict doom for one of the most effective search engines without having a better idea to point to. Researches are working on better searching. Google itself came from such a project. I expect Google is doing some of that research itself.
Doomed for failure (Score:2)
Look around at the "successful" dot coms. Yahoo's gone from 250 to 18. Amazon (yes, I know we hate it, but it's one of the few well-recognized dot coms on the Street) from 100 to 12.5. Transmeta, which IPO'ed only a short while ago, from the 40s to 6. It's that bad out there. Unless you're AOL, a company which really isn't an internet company anymore, or eBay, the only real survivor of the dot com era, you're not going to do anything on Wall Street. If Google is truly serious about IPO'ing this year, its price will probably start in the $7-8 range, and God help it if it warns, because it'll quickly fall below $5, oblivion for publicly traded companies (look at Loudcloud and Agere which IPO'ed a couple months ago).
Online advertising alone isn't enough to cut it. Without a real business model, Google's better off as it is, a geek's delight and out of the vicious spotlight cast on tech stocks by the financial markets.
Re:Beta image searching tech! (Score:1)
am i the only person who sees porn in their future?
You think they made a mistake? (Score:2)
What makes you think they did something wrong?
I would love to have started from my dorm room and ended up as any kind of corporate institution. (Loved and respected, preferably, but I'll take feared if that's the only quality left on the menu. Well, feared in a light cream sauce.) This is one of those rags-to-riches stories that the American Dream used to fuel.
Re:Inacuracies in the BBC Article (Score:1)
Re:How goes Google make the $ (Score:2)
//rdj
Re:WHAT IS AN IPO? (Score:1)
Should be able to find info online, try google [google.com]
Hey ABC! (Score:2)
uncertainties (Score:2)
Personally I would wait if I were the Google staff. The market conditions for tech right now suck, and I think Google should look a bit more into making some form of money to show investors they can return their (the investors) money.
Take a look at Yahoo which peaked once as far as stocks went, nowadays its a crappy stock. Even Yahoo is having a hard time turning profit and even though Google is nice for searching, what else could they possibly offer via way of return funds to an investor with the minimal advertising thats done there?
Example, it seems that they've added sponsors to a particular search query which match what you're loking for, however when people want something they're searching for, how many people click those links?
It's a definite crappy market for now, and many investors see tech sleeping for a few years, and people are scared of dumping their money on tech stocks.
why ISN'T it a good time to IPO? (Score:3)
If a company has solid fundamentals, is increasing revenues and moving towards profitability while sustaining healthy growth, now is as good or better a time to go public than two years ago.
People who make this complaint seem to assume that the best time to go public is when everyone else is, when there is exuberance in the market and stock charts zooming all over the place. At such a time when public retail trader demand (and private institutional demand) for new IPOs was at an incredible high, you saw supply rise to meet the demand by pumping out one crappy IPO after another. Eventually, people started to realize that investing in companies with no fundamentals, no differentiation, no stable growth, no profits, etc.... was investing in (ahem) bad companies and they stopped doing it (public traders and private financiers).
I think it is more reasonable for quality companies, dotcom or no, to go public when the market itself is stable. There isn't the incredible demand that there used to be, sure- and there is even less supply. But when good companies good public, smart people (public and private) know they might be worth investing in. I think Google will probably fare rather well. By saying that, I mean that they'll close above their offer price- and by the end of the year- probably still be above that price. No, that isn't a VA Linux $350 2nd day closing price- but I bet Google won't drift down to $3.00 within 18 months, either, if they've become profitable.
search engines (Score:1)
As a new google convert, I'm thinking an IPO would be a bad thing for end users. I'd imagine at the very least it will force google into adding more "stuff" (advertisements / graphics ) to the search interface and results pages. Maybe the occasional interstital for viagra will pop up if you're searching on the word "tool".
It's a shame that something so simple and functional could get ruined as a direct product of its own success. But this is the new internet economy we're living in
Re:Inacuracies in the BBC Article (Score:1)
Re:A few thoughts. (Score:1)
And I like Google's Deja much better than the mess that Deja made of the original dejanews. I like being able to pull back a complete thread quickly. It would be nice if there were parent relationships, but I'll take the speed increase and just scan.
That said, I'd love to see how google intends to make investor-friendly (i.e. ever increasing profits) money. I still don't see how they can offset the IT costs with the minimal advertising they have. The deal with Yahoo and others can't be worth that much, can it?
I would suggest that, as a company and not knowing how much in debt they are, they would be better off not going public. If their sole goal is for the owners and investors to quickly make back their investments before the lure of the internet completely bottoms out, our beloved google will be dead within a year, or warped into a form we don't recognize or like.
Let's hope... (Score:1)
-motardo
I wonder (Score:1)
Re:Google SUCKS (Score:1)
agreed. I would also think that putting something in quotes means i am looking for a phrase, but the '+'s are still need inside the quotes. Also putting a '+' in front (e.g. +"if you like it" should result in matching all the words in the quotes.
Re:Google SUCKS (Score:2)
Agreed, remember, an IPO isn't a panacea (Score:3)
Other posts have mentioned how Yahoo! started as a directory. Remember Lycos? Search engine gone wrong. Remember AltaVista? Serach engine gone bad. Remember Excite? Search engine gone totally wrong.
These companies didn't all start with the intention of becoming bloated portals, but they wound up that way because there was a compelling business case that forced them to seek other methods of building revenue.
How is Google going to be different?
An IPO is primarily a means for a company to raise large amounts of cash with which to take the company up to the next level. That's the traditional case for an IPO, at least. In the past few years, the IPO has become a means of generating enough cash to build a company from thin air. Blame the companies all you want, but investors who didn't pay attention to the underlying mechanism of the IPO should take the blame just as well.
In the case of Google, I absolutely love it as search engine, but I'm not convinced I should love it as an investment. Let's hope Google is contemplating an IPO for the right reasons, and not as a means of staving off death.
Re:Profitable (Score:1)
How do I know this? I work for such a company. We are (and have been for years) profitable. We have been growing. We want to go in a new direction in R&D, but need serious amounts of cash. We need another production floor, ergo more cash. We could (and have in the past) borrowed the money, but recently, investors have been knocking asking to get in on the action.
We did plan on going public last year, but didn't due to the market. This is a good sign from the employee point of view, since we have continued to grow anyways. In some ways it would be nice NOT to go public, since there are some headaches that are inevitable (yes, worrying about how much my stock options are worth is an issue...). The next couple of projects we want to do will require large amounts of capital, and that will probably require us going public.
It costs money to spend money. We need to get the money from somewhere. Borrow or go public. Going public is probably cheaper. Its a risk, but there is a chance for it to work well for the investor and the company.
-- The Hollow Man
Re:Profitable (Score:1)
-- The Hollow Man
Now may be a good time to IPO (Score:1)
Re:Chode (Score:1)
Was the story about Google going public, or was it about their search mechanisms?
Frankly I think that it was about the floatation, therefore references to your page being in position 5 when its the busiest page you have are indeed irrelevent. Well moderated whoever marked this as off topic.
Strange thing is though, I made an on topic post against an off topic post ;p
A good thing? (Score:2)
Perhaps this may spark a return in confidence to the shares in the technology sector.
It also shows that if you offer a good service, word of mouth can make you a market leader. Perhaps M$ should bear this in mind instead of pi55ing around trying to tie everybody into Bill Gate's megalomania trip with very suspect EULA's for their development kits.
Re:Economy? (Score:2)
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
Hopefully... (Score:1)
Re:A few thoughts. (Score:1)
basic difference between altavista and google: google works. this 'dead-end technology' works almost every time.
basic reason for providing translation: so foreigners can search the english web; having it the other way around is just a convenience. don't like it? go back and read the interview with google's head of r&d, you'll see why it makes sense.
this weekend i went and did two searches on deja and immediately found what i was looking for. i'd say deja is working just fine. your mileage clearly varied...
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
Re:Profitable (Score:1)
Quote: If you have more projects available than people, then you may need to hire people to get those projects going. Where would that cash come from?
This is right on the money. The question is does Googles really has some worthwhile projects to fund?
After reading last weeks interview with Goggles Director of Research - I have to say a solid "No" I didn't see any ideas that, when coded, would make my life better so as a investor, you can count me out of the IPO- regardless of how hyped it may become.
BxT
My first time... (Score:1)
Re:Profitable (Score:1)
3. Google is largely financed by venture capital (Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital - two top VC firms), and therefore must produce a "liquidity event".
VC firms aren't in it for revenues, they're in it for shareholder value. They can't get the cash they need out of a company without selling it, either to the public or a big company with deep pockets. Both VC firms are represented on Google's board of directors, and probably make up the most influential members.
Google doesn't really have a choice now - they committed to this when they made the deals that financed their rapid growth.
Re:Some thoughts on this rumor... (Score:2)
You're falling prey to exactly the same fallacy as everyone else in the mass hysteria of the 1999 IPO market did: that somehow eyeballs == good investment. It is exactly that kind of thinking that caused the bubble to hyperinflate, and then burst: "Everyone is looking at this company's web page, let's invest!" Once they realized that there wasn't actually any money there, the bubble burst.
Even, say, 100 billion hits a day isn't worth any investment at all, if there's no way to make money from them. Would you invest in Slashdot, for example? So what if lots of people look at it - it doesn't make any money. It loses money hand over fist.
I won't know if I want to invest in Google until I see an S/1 and know if they translate their technology into profits or losses. If it costs more to run their engine than they make, and that will be the case for the forseeable future, how is the investment attractive?
Re:Beta image searching tech! (Score:1)
Re:A few thoughts. (Score:2)
Well, as somebody who actually works in the field of web search engines, here's how keyword searches are seen:
"keyword searches suck, everything else sucks even more"
There is a pile of search engine carcasses proving it: the old lycos stemmer, the statistic excite approach, the OpenText structured data query, the Ask jeeves type-20-words to get the same old crappy answer you would get with a single keyword and the list goes on and on.
Yes, sooner or later researchers will find a way to go around keyword searches. But contrary to what you say, this is not bad news for Google. Nothing stops them from adopting the new technology when an alternative arises.
Re:Profitable (Score:5)
It appears that either:
There is, among the public, some bizarre fascination with IPOs. For some reason, people think that your business isn't a "real" business until it makes a public offering. Come ON people! Companies go public for money - that's ALL. Look at the privately-held companies that are many times as large as little startups as Google (I used to work for one: Watkins Motor Lines, part of Watkins Associated Industries: $1B plus in revenues). If you're making money, it's not necessary to sell public stock.
Beta image searching tech! (Score:5)
Just check out [google.com] their beta image searching technology with the search term 'slashdot'.
Matt
Re:It is a good and a bad thing at the same time.. (Score:2)
Re:Cranial-rectal removal in order? (Score:2)
Re:Fix "Google Groups" (Score:2)
--
Different story on NPR (Score:2)
Re:Profitable (Score:3)
As for "seeling their search engine software"... it sounds more to me like they are renting it out-- since their corporate overview specifically mentions that "All of Google's commercial products are hosted by Google, alleviating the need for organizations to manage their own costly search software and resources." Which says to me that there is a revenue stream from subscriptions, and that they will have less worries about market saturation-- since saturation will simply imply a lot more subscriptions.
Huh? (Score:2)
Re:In the beginning... (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo removes such Content from the Service.
Seems to me that this would supersede the "perpetual" license granted below. Even if not, I don't think this would be enforceable - if I did first circulate my novel that way, which I wouldn't anyway, I'm sure a jury would agree with me that it's still mine despite the "sneakwrap" T&C that I never bothered to read.
Re:In the beginning... (Score:3)
Also, remaining private is not an option. When VCs are on board, there are three options for the company: go public, sell to another company, go out of business. The life of a VC fund is usually 10 years or less. The VC wants to sell the stock and distribute the proceeds, or have the company go public and distribute the stock before that. If the company is private, distributing the stock to fund investors is problematic. There are often contractual provisions that force the company to go public in some timeframe (ie. registration rights, redemption rights.)
With VCs involved, it was only a matter of time before Google went public or was sold. It shouldn't be a surprise, and noone can say management is selling out *now*. In the 'dude, you're a sell-out' sense of the word, they did that when Kleiner invested; in the literal selling out (their stock) sense, most likely they won't be able to do that until at least six months after the IPO.
Re:How goes Google make the $ (Score:2)
One of the things people like about Google is that their page isn't cluttered my adverts. However, if you search for things of commercial interest you will find that there are "sponsored links" at the top of the page. This is where companies have paid specifically to have their page at the top when people search for particular words. Cars are a good example, look at bmw [google.com] and fiat [google.com].
Re:Yahoo also.. (Score:3)
Re:Inacuracies in the BBC Article (Score:2)
Inacuracies in the BBC Article (Score:3)
It's nice to see a good company with an excelant reputation braving the Equity Markets. Good luck to them.
--CTH
---
Hmmmm (Score:3)
It is a good and a bad thing at the same time... (Score:2)
Re:How goes Google make the $ (Score:3)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
So you don't mind completely sacrifcing your privacy and/or rights to anything you post to a Yahoo mailing list?
From the Yahoo Groups Terms of Service:
Yahoo does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo the following world-wide, royalty free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:
With respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of Yahoo! Clubs and Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the specific Yahoo! Club or Yahoo! Group to which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo removes such Content from the Service.
With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible area of the Service other than Yahoo! Clubs or Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo removes such Content from the Service.
With respect to Content other than photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Clubs or Yahoo! Groups, the perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
In plain talk, Yahoo claims not to own anything you put up on a Geocities webpage, or post to a Yahoo-owned ML, *but* they retain the right to use anything and everything you post in any and every way they see fit.
Post your original novel to a Yahoo E-group? You just gave all rights to your novel to Yahoo. Period.
In the beginning... (Score:3)
Now...
Yahoo is a corporate behemoth, almost, but not quite as reviled as Microsoft. They are quick to settle upon 'Intellectual Property' and fire off lawsuits as if they were free. Remember Geocities? Yahoo Geocities. Remember E-Groups? Yahoo Groups. A quick and nimble company created by two guys out of their dorm room is now one of the most feared corporate instituations on the planet.
Okay, Google, what did Yahoo do wrong here?
Do what O'Reilly does. (Score:5)
- The company is owned by a select group of founders and investors, instead of a large anonymous mob of stockholders. The founders and investors are likely to know what's better for the company than stockholders seeking only returns on their investment.
- A private company's growth is a direct function of revenue, profit, and cash position. It's growth is a direct result of it's past successes. An IPO creates an unnatural influx of cash that the company didn't "earn" and doesn't necessarily know what to do with. It permits the company to spend money on things they wouldn't DREAM of spending money on if they were still private. In other words, it permits the company to make decisions and do things that are not necessarily good business.
- Sometimes what's best for the company is NOT growth and profit. R&D, poor market conditions, etc. -- any number of reasons to lay low. But stockholders demand PERFORMANCE, dammit! Private companies can employ more restraint.
- Private companies grow organically and typically foster a great deal of employee loyalty and a unique culture. Public companies grow way too fast and acquire smaller companies, destroying said loyalty and culture.
- All too often, going public has nothing to do with what's good for the company, and everything to do with pure, unabated GREED. It all has to do with a few people who want to get very rich very fast. I say screw 'em. They should earn their fortunes the old fashioned way instead: WORK.
Just looking around, I would say that a great deal of what's BAD about America is publicly held corporations. Since when is what is good for stockholders good for America? Big picture here, folks. I say better to have thousands of small private companies than 4 large public corporatations.Tim O'Reilly has stated more than once that he has no intention of bringing O'Reilly public (for many of the reasons I mention above). I applaud him for doing the right thing. Google shouldn't go public. They should succeed on their own merits.
Re:In the beginning... (Score:2)
From a Slashdot fortune: Nice guys don't finish nice.
I don't think you appreciate how difficult it is to survive in a competitive marketplace. There's a reason that the biggest corporate entities in the world seem nasty - philanthropy and goodwill will only get you so far.
To compete with the corporate dirtbags of the world, you've got to play by the house rules.
Re:Beta image searching tech! (Score:2)
-Kraft
Re:How goes Google make the $ (Score:2)
And, since you have to contact a sales rep for a custom quote if you want a custom solution, I'm guessing it's not very cheap
Branching out (Score:2)
Why is the sky blue?
Re:Economy? (Score:2)
Economy? (Score:4)
Google is everything that DotCom '99 WASN'T...it is neat, but without flash or fancy...in fact, the style of google is definitely lowtech (it looks the same on Lynx as it does in IE). Google really was the start of a new wave of successful content, and they're no doubt making tons of ducats leasing their machines and technology to anybody who needs to search...and it's actually GOOD. Hell, Google picked up my webpage AND I NEVER EVEN SUBMITTED IT. Neither did any of my linkers submit their pages...Google genuinely crawled to it, and even cached it (not a big hit...my front page is maybe 2k). Furthermore, surfers trust google because of it's high quality...it has no need to build a brand, because WoM has more than succeeded.
If Google goes IPO, and manages to remain of high quality, it means the beginning of a new Dot com boom -- one based on everything the original wasn't, and uncovering the type of quality necessary to bring the web into the age of frictionless content we've needed. No banner ads, no obtuse simulacrums of greatness, just the same basic faced technology that make the toaster or the 24 oz. drinking glass such insanely great inventions.
Re:How goes Google make the $ (Score:2)
The business, which is based in California, plans to break even before the end of the year, while analysts forecast annual revenues of about $50m by 2002.
Google has built its revenues from advertising and also from licensing its proprietary search technology to other websites and portals.
I hope this is better researched than the article's description of the servers! If I needed to buy a search engine, Google would be one of the first places I'd look, but how much can they get for that? And what happens when someone puts a better search engine on the market? The worst aspect of an IPO (in the USA at least) is that now the company is pretty much committed to showing a profit every quarter, and most software sells irregularly.
I guess they do sell some advertising, but internet advertising is not a great revenue stream either. It's too easy for the advertisers to confirm that their advertisements are being ignored, so they put the big money into TV ads where they don't get direct confirmation of all the mute buttons going on & tapes being fast-forwarded... For another example of what's wrong with advertising, Google's own quite successful "advertising strategy" was to rely on word of mouth rather than paid advertising. Apparently you still don't have to advertise a product that stands out on its own merits!
I hope they maintain control (Score:2)
Having said that, anybody know how we can get in on the IPO? Or is it, as usual, only open to the priveleged.
GreyPoopon
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Gee... (Score:2)
Personally, I would still hold off on an IPO for a few months. While they could (potentially) start a trend if they did it now, they wouldn't get much at this stage in the game.
Not a dumb question (Score:3)
IPO stands for Initial Public Offering. It's simply the first time that a company's stock is offered to the general public. It is underwritten by an investment bank, such as Bear Stearns [bear.com], where they function as the dealer for the stock. IPO's are useful since they provide much cash quickly for further investment and growth for the company.
Re:Doomed for failure (Score:2)
Cranial-rectal removal in order? (Score:2)
I think what they have failed to do is venture into the outside world in the last year, to witness that the days of dotcom hucksterism is over, and stock holders realize that you can't have a profitable company selling banner ad space.
It's sad to see Google out there to prey on unwitting stock buyers, because you can be 99% certain that after the initial IPO at $160/share, they are going to fall even farther through the floor than VA has.
Honestly, this is like hearing that Slashdot is going to announce an IPO. Nice product, but it won't make you a penny in profits.
Re:How goes Google make the $ (Score:3)
This is actually fairly simple.
First, the ads don't show up on the start page, which is a good thing. That way you don't lose people right out of the chute.
Second, the ads that they do feature don't look like ads. They're plain text. This is accomplished through their AdWords service which allows prominent placement just above the search results for companies whose chosen profile matches your search.
This provides better speed, less frustration, and helps eliminate the feeling that you and your precious bandwidth are being sold indiscriminately.