Modern Silicon Valley CEO? Oh, brother.
USATODAY.com – SEC will be reading ‘Playboy’ for the words in Google interview. OK..now it’s getting ridiculous. You cannot live in and around Silicon Valley and not know you cannot do this stuff. I think many of these stunts are perhaps on purpose. After all this is a company — Google — that almost shuts down during Burning Man (an annual crackpot hedonist event coming up later this month).
Google needs the Securities and Exchange Commission to approve its IPO registration statement before it can complete the IPO, a process that will be complicated by the Playboy interview, predicted Michael Zuppone, a former SEC attorney.
“I don’t want to rain on their parade, but I think this interview is going to cause regulatory concern. There could be consequences,” said Zuppone, now in private practice in New York
And there’s still this ludicrous picture of founder Sergey Brin (above) once stashed on various Stanford servers and constantly brought out to chide the guy. This pic is a lesson for you college kids who think they can actually take down a post like this. I’m sure the company Christmas party sees this a lot. I think he may be behind the gag since it fits into the Google image of being a wacky company that makes money no matter what!
To keep up with these maniacs..go here
Google’s gain is Vivisimo’s, too, the Pittsburgh Business Times headline says. http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2004/07/05/focus2.html?page=1
I don’t know how the boys play out in California, but this Google story just keeps getting more involved at every twist in the plot. Vivisimo http://www.vivisimo.com, our local search engine has a good reputation as a company and a technology. It looks like Google faces some challenges that won’t be solved by technology. I’ve read estimates that say Google has a value of $29-$37 billion, which seems high in my opinion. Maybe it’s worth that. Who knows? I think they would have difficulty finding a buyer for the company at that price, but perhaps not as many difficulties as this IPO is having. Any ideas of what the company is worth? I guess we’ll find out if the 29-37 billion dollars is real or if it was ever real. Somehow Vivisimo is going to gain because of Google. I’m not sure how Vivisimo will make out, but I like the thought. Maybe Google will start buying out other search technologies with the $30 Billion they might be worth. Maybe Google is really worth $75 billion, or maybe $175 a share. It’s dotcom boom 2 or BOOM BOOM, lets go back to my room.
Good luck Google and investors. Somebody wins, so somebody needs to lose. I’m waiting to see who the losers are going to be. Of course the IPO hype says that it’s always a win-win situation. Working on commission makes you say that sort of thing, you know. I wonder what the SEC is going to say next. Maybe the SEC will just let Google do all the talking and let gravity take care of the rest. With billions involved, people generally play hardball which may be a new game for Google.
Here’s the “Auctus Perspective”, which I found informative.
http://www.auctusdev.com/googleipo.html
The “Google Weblog” you link to reminds me of the morning I was reading our local newspaper online — noticed they were debuting a new column for wine lovers — and hollered to my wife who was getting ready to head out the door for work:
“Hey, the NEW MEXICAN is adding a wine column.”
Her response?
“I didn’t think anyone in this town needed a special place just to whine!”
Or blog, I guess.
Business is like ham and eggs for breakfast. The chicken is interested but the pig is committed. To have a good business, you need lots of pigs. Have you heard about the pig races? Pigs have racing in their blood.
http://www.njherald.com/news/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1092060604,21519,
Not related, but I loved your column on Word – and I agree 100%, which is rare with any column.
Digging the blog too – thanks!
Really, the best you can pull out of this is “crossdressing hedonists pull stock stunt?” Really, we should hop on the bandwagon to chastise Google for not including this in their risk factors in the prospectus.
I thought the whole “dirty hippies running tech companies” line was played out years ago. Apparently it’s still alive and well after the .com crash. Any hot tips on Google’s actual business process, or upcoming ventures? Or even justfication for this “maniacs” accusation?
TURBO IPO
This IPO might be the most unique offering ever. Google has seemed to build an investment model based on the idea that speed kills. Now we have a whole new way of investing without the need for checking facts or wasting time. This thing is moving so fast, that the facts change faster than the investors ability to analyze them. You could bid on Google and by some the time you know what happens, well something else just happened. So maybe it was good and well then again maybe it wasn’t so good! Wall Street has a way of slowing things down, the value of which is that any analysis is given the chance to be proven or disproven in good time. Automating the process may speed things along, but speed kills.
If you really want to slow down things a few notches, look for the SEC to enforce the speed limits. Google may be getting a few speeding tickets. This is better than crashing and it means less burning. There are limits to how fast a company can grow, even with a turbocharged IPO. Google might want to get a NASCAR team together with some of that cash from the IPO. Go Team Google Go!
oh!…AND BY THE WAY. DON’T HIT THE WALL!
great.. a new DU spambot