GOOG Goo Dolls

Today Rohit, Kragen, and I spent some time with Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer and learned about the exciting new developer platform they've been building called Jot, which will launch its Beta next month. (As an aside, Kragen, Beatrice, Ben, Brad, Kathryn, LP/LP/SB/ES, and 16 others will be camping together at the Save The Man camp in a week... but I digress...)

8/19/2004 reminds me of 8/9/1995, the day that Netscape went public (and Jerry Garcia died), in terms of hyped build-up. This time, Google went public and no famous musician died (unless you count Rick James, but he died last week, not today). And in the nine years between then and now? Well, Google incorporated on 9/7/1998, the day Michelle and I married. And now...

GOOG is out; priced at 85, closed at 100, but still not available for sale in the Google Store.

Right now just about everyone who ever owned GOOG is above water.

Google sold 19.6 million shares at $85 each, raising $1.67 billion, the biggest IPO so far by an Internet company. The shares ended trade at $100.34, up $15.34, or 18 percent, valuing the company at $27.2 billion and its founders' stakes at $4.35 billion. Dan Gillmor: "Google needs to chill out a bit..."

Mmmmm... money...

According to company filings, Page sold 482,000 shares at the $85 offering price, and Brin sold 481,000. A quick calculation puts those paydays at about $41 million. Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, sold 369,000 shares, banking $31.4 million. He still holds a stake worth about $1.2 billion. And, according to the Associated Press, a few other big winners include Andy Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton, who each invested $200,000 in Google early on. Bechtolsheim, who co-founded of Sun Microsystems, made $30.7 million in the IPO and Cheriton earned $28.9 million, the AP said. Bechtolsheim still owns shares worth about $276 million, and Cheriton's are worth more than $260 million. Moreover, Omid Kordestani, a senior vice president, took home $20.4 million when he sold shares into the initial public offering, according to the report. He still owns a stake worth $388.5 million. Google's IPO will likely also give birth to a new generation of millionaires. Joe Rich, executive vice president of Clark Consulting, said Google employees will own about $5 billion in stock, or an average of $2.2 million each, excluding the big share held by the company's top five executives. As many as half of the company's 2,292 employees may be millionaires on paper today.

Current market caps:

General Electric $343b
Microsoft $295b
Exxon Mobil $293b
Pfizer $237b
Citigroup $237b
Wal-Mart $234b
AIG $183b
Johnson and Johnson $169b
IBM $142b
Intel $141b
Procter and Gamble $140b
Berkshire Hathaway $133b
Cisco $129b
Coca Cola $107b
Merck $100b
Altria $99b
Chevron Texaco $99b
Dell $88b
UPS $80b
Home Depot $80b
Time-Warner $75b
Tyco $64b
3M $63b
Morgan Stanley $55b
Hewlett-Packard $54b
Oracle $54b
eBay $53b
Conoco Phillips $50b
SAP $46b
Disney $46b
Goldman Sachs $43b
DuPont $42b
Boeing $42b
Anheuser-Busch $42b
Target $40b
Yahoo! $38b
McDonald's $33b
Google $27b <--- still a long way before it's the biggest and most important company in the world in 5-8 years
Ford $26b
Fedex $24b
General Motors $23b
Costco $19b
Nike $19b
Gap $18b
Harley-Davidson $18b
Amazon $16b
Symantec $15b
Hershey $12b
Sun $12b
Apple $12b
AT and T $11b
Xerox $11b
Eastman Kodak $8b
New York Times $6b
Peoplesoft $6b
Tiffany and Co $5b

I wonder what the lowest public valuation Google will ever have is. I wonder what Google will be worth on 8/19/2009. GOOG, bellwether of the 'OO' index.

As a final note, let me quote John Battelle quoting John Markoff quoting Eric Brewer: "Because Google arose after the Internet bubble, they were able to acquire a very strong technical team. The irony is that they are really more of an advertising company than a search engine company today." As John Battelle noted, Youch.

Added Markoff: "Whether Google will be able to organize a collection of Internet services into such a platform is not clear. So far the company has not had proven success with services like e-mail, catalogs, personalized searches, news and wireless search services."

Comments

[Timboy]

Yawn. Being google-obsessed is _so_ 2003.

[Adam]

Actually, saying something "is _so_ 2003" is _so_ 2002... :)

And didn't you notice that at the top of my links now is Yahoo! Search Blog? I am nowadays more often a Yahooligan than a Googler...

But I bet you don't follow Yahoo around in your car, and sit outside its building at three in the morning just to see who might visit, and make hang-up calls just to hear its voice.... (Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about, Adam.)

[Adam]

Wow. Whenever I stalk Google, it appears that Google also stalks me. :)

[Adam]

Thanks to John Battelle I now know that Google's market cap has passed $50 billion, making it worth more than Yahoo!:

By Michael Paige, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 4:36 PM ET Oct. 25, 2004

LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) - Shares of Internet search darling Google Inc. surged for a third day Monday, vaulting the company's market value above that of rival Yahoo Inc., to more than $50 billion, just two months after Google's initial public offering.

Google (GOOG) rose $14.97, or nearly 9 percent, to $187.40, boosting the Mountain View, Calif. company's market capitalization to $50.8 billion. Shares of Yahoo (YHOO) edged up 24 cents to $35.20, for a market cap of $47.8 billion.

Google's shares have more than doubled since they debuted in August at $85 each.

By the way, with its shares at $98 and change, EBAY has passed a market cap of $65 billion. Compare with the market caps in the post above, and you'll discover that EBAY is now worth more than Tyco, 3M, Morgan Stanley, and Hewlett-Packard; meanwhile, Google is now worth more than Disney, DuPont, SAP, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Target, McDonald's, and Anheuser-Busch.

I fail to see the gravity in this situation...

Then again, this Forbes article put it into good perspective for me...

Microsoft Is A-Rod; Google Is Pujols
Dan Ackman, 10.22.04, 10:20 AM ET

NEW YORK - Yesterday Microsoft announced that its earnings rose by 11% compared to last year, which is no mean feat for a company with $10 billion in sales. That result may or may not have been officially "disappointing," depending on how you count. Google meanwhile more than doubled its earnings, creating the kind of excitement Microsoft once created, and not so long ago. Google also refuses to tell Wall Street what it will do next--it gives no "guidance"--setting up more excitement from its next earnings announcement.

In baseball terms, Microsoft has become Alex Rodriguez. It's still a great company, just as Rodriguez is still a great player, and still relatively young. But while A-Rod used to play in Seattle (near where, in an ironic note, Microsoft is still based), generating not just excitement about its present, but a frenzy about its unknowable future, he now plays for the New York Yankees. They used to say that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for General Motors (nyse: GM - news - people ). Bring that slogan up to date, and it's: Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Microsoft.

Even if Rodriguez has a great year, it's just to be expected. After all, he does make $22 million per year. That's how it is for Microsoft, as its shares haven't traded lower than $23 or higher than $30 for two years. Sure, the company can still do better or worse. It can do better in selling servers or slightly worse in long-term sales. All very nice, but who cares?

Google, though, is Albert Pujols. The only question: Is Google Pujols circa 2003, or is it Pujols circa 2004? Going into the 2003 season, the St. Louis Cardinals first baseman was already a great player, but he was young, so he was paid a relatively paltry $900,000. Forbes.com ranked him the second-best bargain in baseball.

Before the 2004 season, Pujols, too, signed a massive contract, which will pay him $100 million over seven years. Only 24 years old, he is still improving, even as he was probably the second-best hitter in baseball this year, just after Barry Bonds. Yesterday he won the National League Championship Series Most Valuable Player award.

Google, too, had a great season and a great day yesterday. Two months ago it completed its initial public offering. While expectations for the IPO were damped down in the week before the shares started trading, it still raised $1.8 billion in selling less than one-fifth of the company. By yesterday its share price had risen to $149 from $95, and the company was valued at $40.5 billion.

To put that in perspective, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates still has a personal net worth that exceeds Google's market value. Also, at one time Nortel Networks and Sun Microsystems both sported market values nearly double Google's market value today. Today, of course, neither is close.

The word Google is derived from "googol," which is the number one followed by 100 zeros. Yesterday Google reported quarterly earnings starting with a five, then a two, and then just six zeros. Even in yen, that's nowhere near a googol. But Wall Street thinks it's heading in that direction, and immediately bid up the shares even higher.

Google co-founder Larry Page, who spoke to analysts on a conference call with co-founder Sergey Brin and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, said: "We've only just begun. Only a fraction of the world's information is indexed on our computers. We're always looking for more ways to do this."

Google says its goal cannot be expressed in financial terms, and thus it will not engage in the game of guidance, followed by delight or disappointment when the guidance is even a little misguided. On the other hand, it does say its goal is to index all of the world's information. That's a promise that a young Rodriguez or a rookie Pujols can't make, but for Google, the world is young.

[madh]

great to read this two years after.