Turnips, GOOG fraud details emerging...AJTJ post is excellent http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=6129248 (Also, the article below on the SEC shows once again it is "asleep at the wheel" - click fraud has been an Internet webmaster issue for 5 years. Accounting practice needs to be changed to "pay for perform" - i.e. a commission on a sale)
I think the GOOG fraud is going to be exposed sooner rather than later- eBay was a cult as you say and a "snorter" as Zeev says ("don't short a snorter") but this is different IMTO:
* Options tricks being used are widespread;
* Employees have been prevented from selling shares unlike top management;
* VCs and "partners" in the Inut space have been criminally compensated for their, umm, support. There are 'revenue sharing deals', pre-agreed Adword program buys, and other revenue inflation tricks just like telecom equipment firms in '99;
* A 6% monthly sequential in "average" Adword pricing is not sustainable in any fantasy galaxy. In fact, this may be the pricing blowoff that the head of advertising buying at eBay complained about LAST quarter;
* Something is definitely strange and unsustainable about the AOL Europe deal and it may be pointing to a tax evasion scheme by Google to run profits through Ireland. GOOG'd profitability has soard after that deal was signed late last year, just in time to award cash strapped Time Warner a billion+ in GOOG options which they now need to sell to buy Adelphia. Has anyone else noticed what a dead franchise AOL is???;
* GOOG is charged with trademark infringement in (I think) five different countries. If every search engine sold Adwords the way they have, the name Louis Vuitton would be associated with fakes, forgeries, and any other POS handbag since GOOG would have brought their "products" up high on the search hits (Oh, that's already been done!);
* Content rebranding is a form of theft and GOOG backed off challenging Agence France Presse when charged. What it Reuters and other news content generators start demanding payments from GOOG?
* Insider selling has been breathtaking and unrelenting- Schmidt, Brin and Page are the three criminal stooges of the options game-- how is their value added worth $3B each??
* There's more here but that's some of the line of investigations going on.... Oh, and that issue of "click fraud" which is now a STAGGERING 20% of their traffic on non-GOOG sites. GOOG ignores reports of click fraud (see trade web sites) and a massive cottage industry of web sites defrauding advertisers IN PARTNERSHIP with GOOG is booming.
The devil is in the accounting choice details and the company's complete failure to have any business model transparency is a HUGE RED FLAG. Moreover, when your management is focused on bragging about monetizing everything ("all we have to do is move into a new country and open a local bank account") then the seeds of destruction are already growing.
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