The flotation of Google has been eagerly anticipated for three
years. Many expect it to revitalise tech and internet stocks across
the board and compare it to the successful flotation of Netscape in
1995.
That flotation of the company behind Navigator, the first
mainstream web browser, is seen as the point when investors took
internet companies seriously and the conception of the dot.com
bubble.
According to the Financial Times, the Silicon Valley-based
company is thinking of holding a massive on-line auction for its
shares in March 2004, in part to break Wall Street's hold on the
IPO business.
The FT cites an unnamed source "close to the company," and
estimates Google's current profits at around $150 million on
revenues of $500 million.
However, CNET News.com quotes co-founder Sergey Brin saying the
company does not need the case and that, while it would be "nice to
have the currency" of a public company, there is no date set.
"There are significant management distractions to be a public
company," Brin said at a Search Engine Strategies conference. But
he did add, "there's a good chance we're eventually going to do
it."
It was the year of Netscape's $1 billion flotation that Brin,
then 23, met fellow Stanford University graduate Larry Page, then
24 and at the time, best known for having built a working printer
out of Lego.
In January 1996 Brin and Page began work on a search engine
called BackRub, named for its ability to analyse the "back links"
pointing to a given web site.
BackRub evolved into Google in 1998, named after the word
"googol," a mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros – a
higher number than even the most optimistic valuations of Brin and
Page's company.
