After a series of missteps, Google finally pulled off its much-hyped initial public offering yesterday. The good news about this unusual I.P.O., which sought to deprive Wall Street banks of full control over the sale, is that it made it easier for individual investors to buy the stock. Of course, that may also be the bad news. At its closing price of just above $100 yesterday, Google is valued at a bubbly $27 billion.
The co-founders of the Google search engine, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, got very rich yesterday, and deservedly so. This Internet icon that raised $1.67 billion yesterday by selling only a small percentage of its shares didn't even exist six years ago. Now its very name is part of the information age lexicon, as people talk about ''Googling'' someone.
And unlike some of the dot-com-bubble darlings that famously turned to Wall Street to raise cash merely to burn it, Google is a profitable enterprise. But one worth more than $27 billion? Only time will tell if the company can fend off efforts by Yahoo and Microsoft to build superior search engines.
Some companies go public when PROFITABLE!! Some just to raise money to get profitable eventually - those are the pinky/OTC babies we all love to buy and hate.
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