After making it big in the search engine industry, Google has finally announced its decision to come out with an IPO. Theissue is gaining prominence.
In April 2004, Google, the world’s
most popular search engine, filed
an application with the US Securities
and Exchange Commission
(SEC) for a $2.7 bn Initial Public Offering
(IPO) of its stock. According to
Thomson Financial, Google’s proposed
IPO would be the sixth largest
in history after those of AT&T ($10.6
bn), UPS ($5.5 bn), Charter Communications
& Goldman Sachs ($3.2 bn),
Prudential Financial ($3 bn) and
MetLife ($2.9 bn). The two young cofounders
of Google, Larry Page (30)
and Sergey Brin (31) and the CEO of
the company, Eric Schmidt (48), had
decided to adopt the ‘Dutch Auction
System’ for the IPO issue. Serious
concerns were expressed by the industry
experts over the proposed issue.
However, there were others who felt
that “Google may just break the mold
and change the way things are done.”
In the year 1998, Page and Brin, students
of the Stanford University,
founded Google. Their ambition was
to organize information overloaded on
the Internet in a transparent and superior
way. Over a period, Google
showed a remarkable growth. Starting
with a Web search engine, it expanded
its services which included an
index for finding products, catalogs,
news, computing mathematics equations,
blocking pop-ups and publishing
Web logos. |
