Google's Sale of Its Shares Will Defy Wall St. Tradition

[NashVegas]

The secretive company, which quickly emerged as the most popular method for searching the Internet for information, plans to conduct an auction intended to make its stock widely accessible to individual shareholders. At the same time, it plans to issue two classes of stock so that the founders can retain far more control than is usually the case when companies are publicly traded in the stock market.

And the dry, legalistic language typical of financial documents was replaced, at least at the beginning, with something of a manifesto attacking Wall Street's traditions and the practices of most public corporations.

"Google is not a conventional company," the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, proudly wrote in a preface to the offering that they termed an "Owner's Manual" for Google's future shareholders. "We do not intend to become one."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/technology/30GOOG.html?hp

more analysis:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/30/technology/30value.html?hp

Wired decribes this as a 'middle finger' stuck up at Wall St:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504073639/ds1.htm#toc16167_1

[LoZoccolo]

1. Hmmm...

That kind of talk was a plus in 1999, but will it still be? I guess the market will answer that shortly.

[NashVegas]

2. I've Already Gone Back to Yahoo

cause I'm so tired of getting useless Info-Squatters as the top links when I go looking for stuff. But if you read near the bottom on the second page of the article, you'll see Google's top cheeses don't plan on giving up management control to stockholders.