Google Blogoscoped

Friday, April 30, 2004

Google Bug

There’s a peculiar Google bug discovered by WebProNews reader Diego Palacios Soto. When querying for “d  b” (two spaces inbetween, no quotes) and similar strings, Google messes up the URL display.

The Google IPO

There you go – the Google IPO:

“The wait is over.

Google, perhaps Silicon Valley’s most famous and iconoclastic company, registered to go public Thursday, ending more than a year of intense speculation and signaling that it does not intend to sit idle in the face of strengthening competition.”
– Michael Bazeley, The Google IPO wait is over (Mercury News), Apr. 29, 2004

Also see the Google press release Google Inc. Files Registration Statement with the SEC for an Initial Public Offering and this report: Google does IPO its own way.

Battelle wraps it up:

“Google filed for a prospective $2.7 billion (Wall St estimates) sale, valuing the company in the $20-25 billion range. Unusual aspects: There will be two classes of stock, one with supervoting rights (ten times those of regular shareholders), which keeps power squarely in the founders’ hands. The symbol was not identified (ie, it’s not “GOO”, yet), nor was the market (NYSE or Nasdaq). There are only two banks, Morgan on the left in the power slot, and Credit Suisse on the right. Hambrecht did not make the cut, but their ideas did. Google will auction all of its shares.”
– John Battelle, Now That The Other Shoe Has Dropped, April 29, 2004

Larry Page in an open letter attached to Google’s IPO filing writes:

“Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one. Throughout Google’s evolution as a privately held company, we have managed Google differently. We have also emphasized an atmosphere of creativity and challenge, which has helped us provide unbiased, accurate and free access to information for those who rely on us around the world.

Now the time has come for the company to move to public ownership. This change will bring important benefits for our employees, for our present and future shareholders, for our customers, and most of all for Google users. But the standard structure of public ownership may jeopardize the independence and focused objectivity that have been most important in Google’s past success and that we consider most fundamental for its future. Therefore, we have designed a corporate structure that will protect Google’s ability to innovate and retain its most distinctive characteristics. (...)

DON’T BE EVIL

Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.

MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE

Google users trust our systems to help them with important decisions: medical, financial and many others. Our search results are the best we know how to produce. They are unbiased and objective, and we do not accept payment for them or for inclusion or more frequent updating. We also display advertising, which we work hard to make relevant, and we label it clearly. This is similar to a newspaper, where the advertisements are clear and the articles are not influenced by the advertisers’ payments. We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see.

We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place. With our products, Google connects people and information all around the world for free. We are adding other powerful services such as Gmail that provides an efficient one gigabyte Gmail account for free. By releasing services for free, we hope to help bridge the digital divide. AdWords connects users and advertisers efficiently, helping both. AdSense helps fund a huge variety of online web sites and enables authors who could not otherwise publish. Last year we created Google Grants—a growing program in which hundreds of non-profits addressing issues, including the environment, poverty and human rights, receive free advertising. And now, we are in the process of establishing the Google Foundation. We intend to contribute significant resources to the foundation, including employee time and approximately 1% of Google’s equity and profits in some form. We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems.”
– Larry Page, Open Letter, April 29 2004

Random Dream Generator

The Random Dream Generator resembles Google and... well, creates a random dream.

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