 Google co-founders Larry Page (left) and Sergey Brin |
By 2014, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will have sold enough of their stock to give up majority control of the company, Google announced Friday evening.
In November, Page and Brin entered long-term stock disposal agreements, a very common move designed to give uber-rich executives the ability to diversify their portfolios over time without scaring the stock market. But what’s significant about this particular plan is that by the end of it–assuming that everything goes as planned–Page and Brin will control less than half of the voting power of Google shares, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
At which point, not that this isn’t all bullshit anyways, they can be evil and claim innocent.
This should be good for a laugh.
I have met Mr. Brin. I can say that in my short encounter, he was a complete asshole.
Even if they only own 40% putting together enough votes to over rule them in practice might be impossible.
I find this somewhat disturbing. Google seemed to be headed towards competing in a monopolized market, now they’re opening themselves up to the risk of hostile takeover. Since M$ is totally incapable of producing a competitive search engine, or mobile phone platform, this could spell trouble.
#5 Google’s market cap is about $175 billion (give or take some pocket change). Who’s going to buy them? The Fed?
Every news site I’ve seen post this seems to be missing the real story. Why are the two of them both selling the exact same amount of shares and why so many? The value of the stock being sold pre-tax is nearly 2.75bilion a piece. My thoughts is that they are going into another joint venture of some sort.
#7 Macbandit –
They could start there own venture capital fund with some of that money. One thing Google was involved with that needs money is infrastructure investing.
On the Jan. 20 CrankyGeeks, Dave Mathews and Rob Enderle discussed Google trading in energy and Google becoming a major player in Broadband over Power Line – 1 Gbps downstream speeds into homes (John C. Dvorak received such a kit).
Also Google with or without Larry and Sergey could invest in the whole carbon trading thing.
Or buy A LOT of FCC spectrum.
I bet they asked themselves, “Is this all there is?”
Time to try something new..
They’re going to open a tea shop in the village. Ten o’clock silver service with warm scones and cup cakes.
The “don’t be evil” pretensions will go away I’m sure. The stock value will start collapsing any time now; ala Steve Jobs, although I don’t forsee these two staging a comeback to save the company in like 2018 or anything. But expect safe but boring Microsoft to snatch it up at the bottom, or maybe IBM.
I wonder if they were told that they’re selling their stock by the CIA? Hmmm…
Diversify and invest in this market? I can see these guys investing in themselves with new projects or other startups. When you go public you can get rich, but you loose some control. You have a whole new set of regulations and hoops to jump through also.
The only question is: who is going to be in control after?
owning google’s relational database is like having your very own public ECHELON system. The abuse potential (already is) infinite.
-s
10 years: zero to a behemoth
And for the most part, started in the midst of the dot-com bust when there “were already too many search engines” like Yahoo, Lycos, Altavista, Hotbot” and “the world didn’t need another search engine.”
I would get out while the getting out is good.