Google has just released an update to their Prospectus. The first update to the prospectus included a Meet the Management Presentation. The second update is a text copy of an interview the founders gave to Playboy magazine directly before the silence period.
And if you did not read it elsewhere, auction of Google's common stock is planned to commence at Tuesday, August 17, 2004 at 4:00 p.m. (EDT). Anyone know why they decided to start it at 4PM?
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There was an interesting NPR commentary on the Google IPO a few days ago. A financial journalist attempted to participate in Google's populist IPO, and decided to write a radio news story about it. He discovered that participation is actually substantially more difficult than Google is letting on, and that many people are getting sort of screwed incidentally in the process.
What happened (roughly) is this: the journalist signed up for his Google IPO identification ID through Google's website. You can't actually participate in the IPO through the website, though. You have to utilize one of Google's affiliated brokerage firms to purchase shares. The brokerage firms are, of course, Google's underwriters. So, the journalist opened an E*Trade account, which cost him a bit of money. After opening the account, he discovered that he had to go through a qualification process in order to actually purchase shares. Among other things, the qualification process requires that you divulge information about your yearly earnings and net assets, as well as a self-assessment of your financial knowledge and understanding of the Google IPO. After filling in this information, including specifying that he was quite knowledgable as a financial journalist, he was rejected by E*Trade. Apparently his financial journalist job doesn't pay enough money for him to actually participate. In his own words, he said that he figured he was probably very close to the median wage for American citizens, so this disqualification definitely discounts the basic principles of Google's populist IPO. To top it all off, now he has an E*Trade account that he paid for, but didn't open for any reason other than to participate in the Google IPO. Sounds like a bit of bait and switch to me.
Adam
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