Google Goes Public At The Bottom Of The Reduced Range
from the ouch dept
Well, it's finally happened. After reducing the range for their IPO last night, Google finally got the nod from the SEC, and priced tonight at $85 -- the bottom of the reduced range, suggesting just that interest in the IPO was quite weak. Perhaps that's because it was so complicated that many investors couldn't get in on the process. If that's the case, then many investors who couldn't get in on the IPO may try to buy in tomorrow, pushing the stock up. However, if a lot of original investors are just there to flip, there will be downward pressure as well. The shares will begin trading tomorrow, and expect plenty of commentary on which direction the price actually heads.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
How is it supposed to make money?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
Google is now adding more features to make it more of a Yahoo clone, and looks sort of like Yahoo in 1997 or so.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
As is Google...
Not sure the point you're trying to make.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
$14 billion market? That doesn't seem too bad...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
If google makes a small cut from referral services, what's to prevent a million other companies from doing the same?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
Yeah, but Google didn't raise a lot of VC money and are clearly making a lot of money from advertising. Besides, no one declared themselves "profitable" because of how large their valuation was.
If google makes a small cut from referral services, what's to prevent a million other companies from doing the same?
I'm guessing you haven't spent much time on this internet thing... Google makes money because their search is much more useful than just about any other search engine out there. Thus, they get the eyeballs, and the advertisers. Those millions of other sites don't have the pull to get the eyeballs, and thus, the advertisers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
The *only* barrier to entry is the quality of their results compared with the competition. And they are ignoring that aspect of their business big time. They are doing the DMOZ thing of them (websites) vs us and how can we keep the evil them from infiltrating our pure indicies.
Their results are no longer the most relevant as they chase this theory that links are more important than content. Which is why the huge surge in link farms and directories as everyone searches for links to satisfy google's new idea.
Only it is much easier to spam links than it is to create real and unique content, which is why the metas and other engines are gaining back on them at the moment.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How is it supposed to make money?
Are they really making money, or is it more funny accounting based on virtual this and virtual that? I've never found Google contextual ads to be useful. It just links to either scam sites, retailers that do not offer what they claim to offer, or dead links.
>I'm guessing you haven't spent much time on this internet thing... Google makes money because their search is much more useful than just about any other search engine out there.
I've spent a significant portion of my waking life on the internet for over a decade. When I looked for a dentist recently, Google could not name any dentists near me. I used another site.
>Google makes money because their search is much more useful than just about any other search engine out there.
What about Yahoo, MSN, or any number of other search engines that use the exact same underlying technology, give the exact same results?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
IPO Fraud
What the investors failed to notice is that they have dropped (by 24%!!!) the numbers of shares they're offering in a flailing attempt to get even the reduced asking price. Considering that the first 108 to 135 range at ~25.6mil shares represented about 10% of the company's outstanding paper. What smart investors know though is that stocks that represent a lower precentage of investment are automatically worth less (in this case, way less than $85 per share).
The attempt to reduce supply (number of availabe shares for allocation), in an attempt to raise the price per share (shares which now hold a lower value) speaks volumes about the ethics that are at work in Google's offices. I really fail to see just how Google's behavior is any different that investment firms hyping stocks externally while acknowledging internally that the hyped stocks are actually losers that are on a one way ride down the tubes.
All Google is doing it taking advantage of the inummerate masses.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
It's pretty much a straight play on advertising on the net so let's see what multiple investors assign to it compared to yahoo!. I suspect the 85 dollar mark will be trade 30% above and below in a 6 month period ... only question is which end it will start at.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]