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Google Businesses The Internet Government The Almighty Buck Politics

Google Share Loss Amounts to Billions 316

Posted by Zonk from the quite-a-dip dept.
aCoward writes "Today's full page headline on the UK Independent: £13,000,000,000 in Googlised colours, with the subheading Google shares plummet in one day amid growing fury over censorship and plagiarism. While the company says it isn't worried about the stock price correction, there are other issues at hand." From the article: "Google is under mounting pressure from many traditional industries: telecommunications companies do not like its plan for free internet phone calls, book publishers and newspapers have filed a lawsuit to try to prevent it from digitising library materials, governments are worried about its satellite-imaging service Google Earth and privacy advocates have a growing list of concerns about everything from its e-mail service to its desktop search function, both of which may make it easier for hackers or government agencies to gather information about individuals without their consent."
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Google Share Loss Amounts to Billions More

Google Share Loss Amounts to Billions

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  • Now I'm Confused (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@noSpAM.gmail.com> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:43PM (#14626855) Journal
    I'm not an investor or broker so perhaps someone can explain this to me while I furrow my brow in a vain attempt to understand the situation.

    From TFA:
    It was the second time in a week that Google shares - the hottest, most talked about company stock in the world - were plunged unexpectedly into a frigid bath.

    Ok, shares plunged. Got it. Now, let's go look at the big board [yahoo.com] for the last five days. Ok, I see the plunges, $430 to $390. Ouch--12%.

    But with today's trading, as of 11 AM Central Standard Time, shares are hovering around $405 [yahoo.com]. How frigid is that "bath" if it only takes five days to get back up to $430? Clearly it's already rising back up to its once held position.

    Perhaps it's time I make 12% on that extra $1,000 rainy day money I've got lying around. What does slashdot think? Google stock for the (almost certain) cash or Rickenbacker bass to make my going-nowhere-band slightly better?

    • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Alex P Keaton in da ( 882660 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:47PM (#14626911) Homepage
      I'm not an investor or broker so perhaps someone can explain this to me while I furrow my brow in a vain attempt to understand the situation.
      I will simplify it the best I can- Google's profits were pretty good. But they weren't as good as some analysts projected
      The high google prices were based on the analysts projections, so when google failed to meet the projections, their stock went down
      I won't get into the foreign currency accounting crap that led to them being in a higher tax bracket and thus having lower profits.... (Foreign currency accounting was the most annoying accounting class of the many I have taken...)

      • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:5, Insightful)

        by caffeination ( 947825 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:17PM (#14627270)
        I've got a brilliant business idea based on this. Basically, I want to move a step or two ahead in the predictions game. Fittingly inspired by google - meta-analysis:
        Instead of trying to predict what the stock market will do, which is difficult, and you have to compete against thousands and thousands of analysts, you just try to predict what the analysts will do, and take advantage of the ripples they cause.

        • Yeah, and let's then predict what the analysists that analyse the analysists predirect! Everyone will be a millionaire before you can say "bubble *splat*"... :-)

        • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Mr. Flibble ( 12943 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @03:16PM (#14628614) Homepage
          Or... You can listen to the likes of Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett.

          They both advocate that you TOTALLY IGNORE what the market is doing because it is impossible to predict. Buy stocks on their MERITS. If a stock meets your fundamental merits, and the crazy wiles of the market seem to have made it under priced because of some moronic panic or something similar... Then buy it.

          And hold it - especially if it pays dividends - and never let go of it. Well, almost never. If the market goes really crazy, and you have an opportunity for a large capital gain *OR* the fundamentals are no longer solid. Then sell.

          Using this technique, I made 45% profit on my stocks in the last 2 years.

          Remember, better than 10% yearly return beats the market, and most people can't do that. Not even the so called "experts".

          For reference:

          The Warren Buffet Way 2nd Edition
          Beating the Street, by Peter Lynch
          The Future for Investors, Jeremy J. Siegel
          The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham

      • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The high google prices were based on the analysts projections, so when google failed to meet the projections, their stock went down

        Um... if Google doesn't meet the projections, doesn't that mean that the analysts are the ones that have failed?

      • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hackstraw ( 262471 ) *
        I will simplify it the best I can- Google's profits were pretty good. But they weren't as good as some analysts _projected_

        So, in other words Google's inflated stock price fell down temporarily because someone outside of their company screwed up in projecting their profits.

        The funny thing is that Google's owners and employees are probably the least concerned with their profits. Sergey that is one of the original two founders of the company works for a $1/year, drives a lavish Toyota Prius, lives in a small

        • Couple of problems (Score:5, Informative)

          by mckwant ( 65143 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @02:52PM (#14628375)
          1) The estimates aren't based solely upon the analysts' views. Frequently, the final estimate is based on a negotiation between the company and the analyst. It's not quite as explicit as that, but there are a lot of ways that the company can adjust the estimate (warnings probably being the most overt).

          2) It's not necessarily clear that Sergey can sell those shares. Most of the time in an IPO, the founders (etc.) get N shares, but they can't legally sell them for a period of time after the IPO. That helps keep the founders (etc.) in line while the company gets used to being publicly traded. As such, his net worth on the N shares he has is N*(price of google stock), but it's illiquid.

          Less formally, should that not be the case, and he dumps all his shares, what do you think happens to the company? A founder of the company has basically said that he has absolutely no faith in the ability of the company to make money moving forward. If that happens, a 12% dip is going to seem like a nice day.

          The people who generally make real money in on IPO are the investment bankers and venture capitalists, not the founders.
    • Nobody wants volitility in their stocks.

      The more volitile your stock values are, the harder it is to 'plan' for the future.

      OTOH, Google has already said they don't give a damn about the short term. The founders have 51% of the stocks & Google doesn't release quarterly reports.

      These guys are in it for the long-haul and a 2-week swing in their share prices doesn't really mean anything to them, even if they personally stand to lose a shitload of money every time it happens.

      • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:5, Informative)

        by nelsonal ( 549144 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:56PM (#14627034) Journal
        The founders have no where near 51% of the shares, but the shares they do have carry the right to 10 vote 10 times so they have well over 51% of the vote. (Ford, Dow Jones, and Comcast all have similar corporate structures). They have to release quarterly reports or they cannot trade in the US. The quarterly reports are required to include certain items (financal statements and notes, certification of CEO/CFO that numbers are valid etc). They are not required to inform investors of their quarterly results, but most companies do in the form of a conference call between large investors (or their representatives) and management. I believe if held these conference calls must be available to listen to by smaller investors. Google unlike most techonology companies does not provide earnings guidance (or what management believes they will earn in the next three months) given that one of the three months is done, managment is in a good position to forsee the quarter's results.

      • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rude Turnip ( 49495 )
        "Google doesn't release quarterly reports."

        Correction--they don't release quarterly estimates. Every public company has to release their actual, quarterly results through SEC Form 10-Q. fyi, 10-K is the annual report.

    • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you honestly can't decide between the CHANCE of a little money in the future and the UNDENIABILITY of rocking now on a new bass, you, sir, are no musician! :P

    • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dasil003 ( 907363 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:00PM (#14627082) Homepage
      I'm not an investor or broker so perhaps someone can explain this to me while I furrow my brow in a vain attempt to understand the situation.

      Well if you really want to make money in the stock market you have to have some insight beyond the average investor. The fact that Google has awesome growth potential is already factored into the price. From a purely technological standpoint, it's obvious that they have great ideas and the stock could go much higher. But the real uncertainty is with so many different companies and organizations out for Google's blood, they could get into serious legal trouble which could stop a lot of their innovation dead in its tracks. I don't think anything could kill Google at this point, but its definitely conceivable that the share price could lose 50% of its value and take decades to get back to where it was. That's not what I think will happen, but that's the type of risk you run investing in volatile stocks. If you've got $1000 to spare and you feel like a little gambling, then go for it, your odds are definitely better than in Vegas.

      • Well if you really want to make money in the stock market you have to have some insight beyond the average investor.

        The problem is that even if you do have insight beyond the average investor, that doesn't mean that your investment will act as you expect it will. Attempting to guess at whether an individual stock will do well is akin to guessing at the beginning of the season who will wind up in the Super Bowl. By the way, according to Gambling911 [gambling911.com], the Steelers' odds of winning the SuperBowl were 12 to

      • Well if you really want to make money in the stock market you have to have some insight beyond the average investor.

        The way I look at it, the stock market is driven by three things: greed, fear, and information. To beat the market, you need to be more rational than the next guy (less subject to greed and fear) and/or have more information. Then you can recognize when the market has overpriced/underpriced and act accordingly. This isn't impossible, but it is difficult and it is risky. Unless you're good an

    • I'm sorry. You have attempted to apply logical and/or rational thought to the great mob mentality that is the modern stock market.

      Please take two ritalins, rotate your stock portfolio by ninety degrees, and try again later.
      • "Please take two Vicadins, rotate your stock portfolio by ninety degrees, and try again later."

        I fixed that for you. Don't ever suggest that someone trading stocks take perscription stimulants. It can only end badly as their heart races wildly out of control.

    • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fimbulvetr ( 598306 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:03PM (#14627121)
      Individual investors are ruled by emotion. Many stocks go down, even on high earnings, if their earnings are not as high as regular projects or "whisper" numbers. Smart investors capitalize on this very fact. Google has a lot of institutional (Huge amounts of money controlled by very experienced and rational investors) investor support, which is exactly why it didn't take a 30%+ hit - institutional support. If you look at the IBD [investors.com] chart (sorry, have to subscribe), you'll find that Google didn't even close under its 50 day moving average - a very, very good sign.

      If you want to learn more, I suggest at least doing a trial of IBD. I've recently listened to an audio book that was quite helpful as well: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnIn quiry.asp?userid=xD6wFbUCot&isbn=0760750106&itm=1 [barnesandnoble.com]

      • Not Too Rational (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rumblin'rabbit ( 711865 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:22PM (#14627340) Journal
        Individual investors are ruled by emotion.

        Google has a lot of institutional (Huge amounts of money controlled by very experienced and rational investors) investor support

        I see little evidence that (in general) individual investors are emotional and institutional investors are rational. Quite often it's the opposite. This is particularly true when markets turn sour, and the insititional investors are yelling "sell, sell, sell" just when stocks are cheaper.

        Individual investors have the luxury of being their own boss. They can hold on to any stock they want for as long they want. In the past I've bought stocks in steel and forestry that I knew were in a depressed industries. I knew I might have to wait 5 years of more before they turned around. I also knew that when they did they would double or more (thank you, IPSCO).

        Institutional investors, on the other hand, are constantly having their decisions questioned. They know that even one bad year can mean the end of their job. Thus they can not afford to be too patient or too rational. They have to ride the trend.

        • Individual investors have the luxury of being their own boss. They can hold on to any stock they want for as long they want. In the past I've bought stocks in steel and forestry that I knew were in a depressed industries. I knew I might have to wait 5 years of more before they turned around. I also knew that when they did they would double or more (thank you, IPSCO).

          Institutional investors, on the other hand, are constantly having their decisions questioned. They know that even one bad year can mean the

    • $1000 of Google stock won't attract women, but a Rickenbacker bass can, assuming you know how to play it :)
    • The bass might lead to downloading less pr0n!

    • Re:Now I'm Confused (Score:4, Informative)

      by dwandy ( 907337 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:19PM (#14627296) Homepage Journal
      A thousand bucks? That'll get you like TWO SHARES ...
      I don't know if you could even get someone to part with just two shares. While it's not always the case, most shares are sold in lots, and a common lot size is a multiple of 100...Expensive shares like Google will definately have more exceptions, but I still doubt you will be able to buy only a $1000 worth of Google.
      In fact ...(where's the damn article when you need it?) the high share price is apparently part of Google's strategy. By keeping a higher share price they limit the number of little investors, leaving more shares in the hands of big institutions who are less likely to buy+sell a lot, which in turn leads to a more stable stock price...
      Most companies "manipulate" their stock price by splitting [sec.gov] when it's too high, and do a reverse split [sec.gov] (not so common as it's not always seen as a positive sign for the company) when they want to increase the price of the shares. They do this to attract certain levels of investors.
    • Normally I'd recommend investing your money, but cmon get the Rickenbacker. Thats a fine, Santa Ana California made bass.

  • And the sad part (Score:5, Funny)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:43PM (#14626860) Homepage Journal
    The sad part of this is it's because investors weren't happy with profits being up "only" 82%. They had expected more. So they sold.

    Is the stock market full of asshats or what?

    • Re:And the sad part (Score:4, Informative)

      by Alex P Keaton in da ( 882660 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:49PM (#14626939) Homepage
      Arrgh- read my above post. The high stock prices were based largely on analysts projections- when google's profits didn't meet the projections, the stock dropped.
      It doesn't matter how big the profits are- they could be 1000%, but if the projections were 1100%, the stock will drop... Nothing asshat-ish about it....

      • Re:And the sad part (Score:5, Informative)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:17PM (#14627272) Journal
        There's something very asshat-ish about it

        Those analysts don't have complete information.

        Google said that if their tax rate hadn't been running 41.8%, they would have outperformed the analysts projections

        here's a googd article explaining why their tax rate was higher
        http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid= [marketwatch.com]{A8 C3D767-35C8-474B-814B-0A368475955B}

        Or, you can pick your own article
        http://news.google.com/news?q=google+tax+rate [google.com]

        The large investors & smart analysts stuck by Google once they heard the explanation.

        • Re:And the sad part (Score:4, Interesting)

          by CaymanIslandCarpedie ( 868408 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @02:18PM (#14627994) Journal
          Google (unlike almost all other tech companies) don't give thier own quarterly projections, so incomplete information or not, the analysts projections were the only projections out there (unless individual some investors did thier own), and thus were relied upon when coming to a valuation. Stock prices aren't set based on last quarters performance, but on next quarters perforance. If the final numbers come in under best available projects (based on full information or not), you will see a correction.

          Now this doesn't mean the company is in trouble or that is outlook isn't even perhaps better today than it was a quarter ago. It is simply a market based reality. If your performance is under the best projection that people used to value the stock, the stock will correct to account for that unless another outside force counters that.

    • Re:And the sad part (Score:3, Informative)

      by lasindi ( 770329 )
      The sad part of this is it's because investors weren't happy with profits being up "only" 82%. They had expected more. So they sold.

      Is the stock market full of asshats or what?

      No, what you forget is that stock prices are determined by how valuable people think the shares are. If I expect profits to be up, say, 90%, I might be willing to buy shares for $450 each, but if I expect them to be up 82%, I might only be willing to pay $400 per share. So, if my expectation of 90% growth isn't met, but I've already b
    • Is the stock market full of asshats or what?

      Standard wisdom: "The markets are driven by fear and greed."
      Think of it that way and you'll maybe understand better.

      The most profitable corporations aren't getting any love either. Exxon-Mobile stock did nothing because people don't expect they can keep up the sort of profit-making they had this last year.
      Wal-Mart comprises 2% of the entire US economy. That's absolutely HUGE. Yet they can't get any traction because people are afraid they can't increase profits by
  • If you're playing the stock for the long haul, you're just chuckling to yourself. Its up how many fold in the past 12 months?
    • Exactly. If you thought the stock price was going to keep going up forever you were crazy. Nothing will continue on that kind of meteoric rise over the long term. This isn't even a correction, this is just a day or two of trading after a 'lower than expected' earnings report. The company is not in trouble and hasn't lost any of these major lawsuits. I expect the stock price to be back up in a week or two.

    • Re:So, it lost a couple billion... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Eightyford ( 893696 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:49PM (#14626938) Homepage
      Two fold. But ask people how well they did with gold stocks over the long haul. Or how about pets.com stock? Maybe now is a good time to unload the Google stock, and quit while you're ahead.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Call me Nostradamus (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:44PM (#14626874) Homepage
    This reminds me of the spending spree done by tech companies during the stock price boom of the late 90's. Google has now found themselves with a shit load of cash, and they figure they better do something with it before people realise how overvalued the stock is. Link [slashdot.org]

    I'd say call me Nostradamus, but this should have been obvious to everyone.
  • I guess there aren't clear-cut topics for everything, but is this really a "politics" issue? I guess they mention "government" in the blurb, but still...
  • Google's riduculously high stock price amounts to a gamble on the part of its investors. I wonder how many investors knew this was coming and were smart enough to short this stock.
    • You do realize that the price of an individual share is an essentially trivial attribute, don't you? Sure, it sets the entry barrier a bit higher, but it plays no role in anything else. Shorting this stock is about the dumbest move you can make. There's no cap on how much you can lose if you short a stock, and a volitale stock like this means it has extraordinarily high risk and a comparitively small gain.
      • Agreed. Buying a metric ass ton of put options, on the other hand, could make for a very nice year.

        Of course, if you're feeling really frisky and very bearish on Google, you could always sell uncovered calls. I bet there are a lot of people out there willing to buy March 500s! (God forbid it should actually hit that, though, you'd be ruined.)

        *Note: the above does not constitute investment advice. When trading, always evaluate a stock's risks and objectives. Consult a financial professional for more details.
        • If I remember correctly, a stock isn't optionable until at least 3 years after the IPO. Google hasn't been public that long.

          Otherwise, you're right. Buying options is generally safer than short selling.
          • Not always true. There's already a market maker for this stock (not sure who it is, I don't have access to Thompson anymore...kinda miss working at an online brokerage). You can check out the options for GOOG here: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=GOOG [yahoo.com]

            The premiums on the options are almost as whacked as the stock itself. A June '06 350 (which I'm picking almost at random) is going for $15.90. So it's going to cost you $1590 to just to buy 100 contracts (the minimum, for those new to options trading, all trad
      • Share price may be irrelevant, but price to earnings per share isn't. And Google is trading way high. The current EPS ratio is 89. For comparison, yahoo! is trading at 26 and the industry average is 30.

        Clearly some of this valuation is growth related; stock holders believe that future earnings are not only in the bag, but they're also much larger than current earnings. So shorting GOOG is a bad idea. But even if you disagree with how valuable the company is, the fundamentals are still strong. They're making

  • This has nothing to do with censorship (Score:3, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:45PM (#14626893) Homepage Journal
    In fact, the censorship stuff would make people more intrested in investing. The problem is that they missed earnings estimates (not their own estimates, but other peoples). Some people say because of a diffrent tax scheme or whatever, but I doubt that.

  • Let the games begin... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:45PM (#14626894)
    This is the price of doing the right thing (most of the time).

  • Google may have a hard time, but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drhamad ( 868567 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:45PM (#14626895)
    Google may indeed have a hard time ahead of it, especially legally. It's legal bills are certainly going to be a large amount of their budget. Personally, Google scares me - they're a giant, and they succeed at almost everything they do, and what's almost worse - they usually have good products. This sounds good, but it just means they're entering more and more arena's, as the article says, and what happens when one day they control everything?

    At the end of the day, even if Google stops expanding right now - cuts out Google Earth, Google News, etc it would still have a massively profitable advertising business. So even if its growth slows, even if its stock plumets (face it, it is unreasonably high), it isn't going anywhere. As Google itself said - there's no reason to worry about the stock dip.
    • Google may indeed have a hard time ahead of it, especially legally. It's legal bills are certainly going to be a large amount of their budget. Personally, Google scares me - they're a giant, and they succeed at almost everything they do, and what's almost worse - they usually have good products. This sounds good, but it just means they're entering more and more arena's, as the article says, and what happens when one day they control everything?

      What happens? Awesome happens!

      Google: "We're always watching, be
    • I'm seriously not trolling -- where has google succeeded outside of search (& advertising behind the searches)? It seems to me like every other one of their services has done decently well, but none have become leaders in their market.
  • At least if is fury driving the drop.

    If it was waking up and smelling the coffee, that'd be a different story.

  • A much simpler reason for the price drop. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rude Turnip ( 49495 ) <valuation.gmail@com> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:47PM (#14626915)
    The stock price took a hit yesterday because Google didn't meet analysts' *quarterly* expectations. BFD. Anyone that's not in the stock market for the long run, please do us all a favor and leave. The following exerpt from an AP article this morning sums everything up:

    "Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have vowed not to forecast the company's earnings because they worry about becoming caught in a trap that will require them to focus on short-term profits at the expense of what's best for the long haul.

    The no-guidance policy has forced analysts to make educated guesses that previously vastly underestimated Google's rapid growth. And that helped fuel perceptions that the company could do no wrong."

    Meanwhile, anyone that bought in at the IPO or any number of months ago is sitting pretty.

    • What kind of dumbass is investing in google stock for the "long run"? Or do you consider a year a long run? Those of us who are smart enough to disregard the ancient, obsolete long term stock investors lunacy get to make money on google when it goes up, when it goes down, and then again when it goes back up. Gee, aren't we dumbasses. BOOYEAH JIM!

  • Interesting test case (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cagle_.25 ( 715952 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:48PM (#14626930) Journal
    Is it *possible* to retain market share without being "evil"?

    I'm not asking that in a wide-eyed naive way, but rather in a realpolitik way: Can a company make compromises with the "keepers of the keys" without losing its core values?

    The deal with the PRC to censor certain anti-China items comes to mind. According to Google, the situation is "better with them there than not." At what point does a rationale become a self-serving rationalization?

  • So, 13 billion pounds is about 26 billion bucks. And if that's 12% of google's net, that means it's worth like $217 billion?

    Isn't that... alot? Or did I miss something?
    • It appears that google's market cap is about $120B. According to the stock screener on Yahoo, there are 32 companies with mrkt caps above $100B, so google is pretty big but not the biggest (ExxonMobil, $390B). If I owned 51% of google, I wouldn't sweat an occasional 12% swing.

  • Seems to me... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:50PM (#14626954)
    And why do 'tulips' spring to mind over this news...?
  • Some people can only dream about how their billions are doing.

  • Part of the reason.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Churla ( 936633 )
    A part of the reason for the irrationally high P/E ratio that Google trades at is the rate at which they have been able to grow and show sustained growth.

    If that growth rate slows to that or a more "normal" company then yes the price will tumble as the numbers will dictate that it is not wise to bet on growth to continue at that pace in the future. This is not Wall Street being stupid and not valuing Google as much as it is Wall Street realizing that maybe they were too optimistic that Google represented

  • Google's stock price has doubled [yahoo.com] over the past year.

    And I don't think we're going to stop using google search and google maps and all the other tools just because their quarterly earnings are a little under expectations.

  • Plagiarism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:52PM (#14626981)

    I would have thought that a journalist would understand the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement. They are two separate things. Plagiarism is when you take credit for others' work. Copyright infringement is when you copy something that you aren't legally permitted to. You can commit copyright infringement without plagiarising (e.g. the majority of music sharing) and you can plagiarise without committing copyright infringement (e.g. taking credit for something that is public domain).

    As far as I am aware, Google are not being accused of plagiarism by anybody but this journalist. They are being accused of copying news headlines illegally, but that's clearly not plagiarism, as the headlines link to the original story.

  • What the stock charts won't show... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by carambola5 ( 456983 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:52PM (#14626988) Homepage
    Nearly all of the stock charts out there neglect the time span between market closing and opening the next day. They usually just take the difference and indicate this as an overnight jump.

    The real story is that the stock plummeted about 16-18% in about the 20 minutes after market close. Overnight, that number readjusted to about 4%. Therefore, all the charts out there will neglect the momentary 16-18% drop, and just show the 4% drop. I've personally taken a small hit from the recent GOOG shakiness, but realize that it's only the short-term investors that are causing this. I bought (a small amount of) GOOG stock not for a quick buck, but for long-term appreciation. I sincerely think Google is doing good things that will make money for its investors (eg: me).
    • When you invest for the "long haul" what you are saying is that you believe that the market is underestimating google's long term growth potential and that you know something that the broader market does not. To justify their current valuations, google's future dividend capability must be at such a high level as to warrant the current inflated stock price. When you are buying shares you should not be saying "i like this company, i think it will do well" b/c guess what, the rest of the market right now think
  • If you're confident in googles abilities, and you believe that the telco's current attempts to extort money from the internet will fail, then you may see this as an excellent buying opportunity.

    http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/standard-portfoli o-tracker// [stockmarketgarden.com]

  • $13,000,000,000 - that's a big number (Score:5, Interesting)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @12:54PM (#14627003) Homepage Journal
    I still don't understand how can Google be valued at over 100 billion USD. An advertising company that also built some pretty good software? The lion share of their profits comes from ads, but I never click on those ads. I guess there must be someone out there who does click on them.

    Maybe Google shouldn't have based its operations in the States? All of these companies are now thinking about suing Google for threatening their older business models. No surprise there. But we now see how NTP patents are being thrown out of the patent office, the same can happen to other firms. Google has plenty of leverage now, even government officials maybe using it once in a while. On the other hand Google has probably pissed off some people in the government, who wanted to get access to their search logs.

    In any case, all of this stock price movement is based on speculations. It was based on speculations that Google will do well in the beginning, and it is based on speculations that Google may get hurt by other firms and even the government.

    As the user of Google search page but not a shareholder of Google stock, I only need to know how these speculations will affect the quality of the free services I am getting from Google. Everything else can burn in hell.
  • That was the funniest thing I've seen all day.

    Do people actually think that it is because of programs like GooleEarth that allows governament agencies to spy?

    I could just picture dubbya sitting at the edge of his chair on release day saying, "now I can finally see what my house looks like from the sky!!!"

    Like gimme a break. I bet all this FUD is just a bee put in someones bonnet with a whole bunch of dollar bills to keep it there. Remember that joe smith is already sold on Google but M$ controls tho
    • Dunno about Google Earth (because it's Windows only), but the satellite imagery on Google Maps is in most instances severely out of date - the images I can recognise are all at least 5 years old.
  • I mean, Google's shares are far to high for the reality of what they do. $400 a share is ludicrous. I mean, most other companies would have split a handful of times if their stocks were truely worth $400 a share, the fact that Google hasn't split yet suggests they know they are in a bubble, and that bubble will burst. I mean, Microsoft's shares are $27, Intel is $21, Apple is a gem at $73, I mean, all these companies MAKE and SELL stuff, the just don't exist virtually like Google does.

    $400 a share won't
  • Governments and large industry consortia are unhappy because Google is offering too much individual freedom....

    Civil liberties advocates are unahppy because Google is collaborating with a government to restrict individual freedom....

    I am grouchy about what Google is doing in China, but this article does give me pause. I'd rather see Google survive and take on all those other repressive forces (which are hard at work in democratic countries to convince us that we have to be restricted from information to
  • It seems to be vogue to start calling Google evil. Even if you don't agree with all of it's policies/decisions, I think some of the items prove what Google is bent on actually *changing* the world, unlike other big software companies (ending with '$').

    The two extremes of the net seem to be: (A) A useless copy of what is out there in the real world. Because of copyright laws, links can only be done to the top of a website, and the majority of content in the real world will never reach the interweb. (B) All i

  • $13B US not 13B Pounds! (Score:5, Informative)

    by grqb ( 410789 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:01PM (#14627101) Homepage Journal
    Google lost $13B US, not $23.1B US

    • Re:$13B US not 13B Pounds! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @02:25PM (#14628080)
      Google lost $13B US, not $23.1B US

      Google didn't lose anything. It still has the same assets and liabilities it had a week ago.

      Share price is nothing more than an index of investor confidence in the company, and investors aren't always wise.

      • That's not entirely accurate. Yes its assets and liabilities have remained untouched, but it lost monetary value. If there were a company that wanted to buy Google today it could be had cheaper than it would have a few weeks before. This could also affect its ability to raise more money (as if they needed to) because they would have to sell off more company control to raise the same amount of capital or to attract new talent who might be looking for better compensation.

  • Consider this... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FalconZero ( 607567 ) * <FalconZero@Gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:04PM (#14627131)
    As Microsoft became bigger (read : multisector monopoly), consumers liked Microsoft less, and companies liked Microsoft more.
    As Google becomes bigger (read : multisector monopoly), consumers liked Google more, and companies Google them less.

    The difference?
    Microsoft's user products generate their own sector where third parties can create products for the Windows platform. Google's products do not. Google's user products are (currently) free, if you don't count the ads. Microsoft's are not.

    My conclusion:
    Microsoft provides most benefit to companies, Google provides most benefit to consumers. Microsoft relies (mostly) on consumers for its revenue. Google relies mostly on companies for its revenue. Both are currently antagonising their customers, but an individual Google customer is more important than and individual Microsoft customer.

    This is all just my observation and opinion, so I'd be interested to see what others think about it....
    • Google is not in any way shape or form a multi-sector monopoly, just like Yahoo isn't. Also, they do not antagonize their customers, they may antagonize content providers and ISPs (well BellSouth anyhow), but their advertisers (read: customers) appear to be plenty happy given GOOG's revenue increases. One last thing, the lion's share of MS revenue comes from corporate purchases of Office and bundling deals with OEMs. In the MS scale of things, individuals actually going out and phyiscally puchasing XP and/o
    • The people who hate Google aren't business customers. Business customers are quite happy.

      The people who hate Google are the people who's businesses are obsolete by the information age. Who's target number one, in their mind? Google.

  • Fighting history (Score:5, Informative)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:09PM (#14627179) Homepage Journal
    Google is simply the most prominent of many companies riding the wave of history. They appeared with good tools at a time when people were just starting to really depend on such tools. They still have a lot of work to do, but the basics (their search engine and business model) are good enough to keep them on the wave.

    The U.S. is in a transition, for better or worse, from the manufacturing economy we've had since 1900 or so to an information economy. I put the date at 1900 since that was about the time the country was mostly settled and people started to buy cars and appliances. The connectedness of everything, in which the primary means of communication is the Internet, spells fabulous riches for those who can take advantage of it.

    The culture and legal micro-management of companies which encourages them to extract the highest short-term profit, at the expense of the long-term health of the company, is destroying our manufacturing base. Everything except weapons will soon be built overseas, since weapons have to be built in a Congressman's home district or they don't get his vote. Most such are built in as many different districts as possible, at the expense of efficiency and quality.

    Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and others will be the new GEs and GMs. The hardware companies will continue to make money, but with lower and lower margins, as more and more capability to access the network gets built into different appliances. Wal-Mart will suck up all the retail business, buying up all the corner grocery stores.

    Wrap all of this together and you see that it's pointless to fight the information wave. Google isn't inventing new, illegal uses for other people's information; they're applying old principles to the new connectedness. Others will copy their model, to varying success. The folks in suits had better get in the boat, or be washed away.
    • The U.S. is in a transition, for better or worse, from the manufacturing economy we've had since 1900 or so to an information economy

      No, we've completed a transition from a productive, creditor nation to a consumer, debtor nation in about 30 years. Someone produced all those neat toys that make your "information economy" possible. Odds are, it wasn't an American. Ideas and "intellectual property" are not tangible goods being produced by this nation. They take nearly no effort to copy. No amount of DR

  • And in other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by rts008 ( 812749 ) on Thursday February 02, 2006 @01:10PM (#14627198) Journal
    Upon hearing of Google's demise, Steve Ballmer celebrates by gleefully throwing his chair through his window and doing the monkeyboy dance while yelling " I warned Google...MuhHaHaHa!"
  • The phone companies, the government, the media companies and everybody else aren't upset at Google per se. They are upset about the public getting new capabilities for free. Human progress normally evolves as a by-product of individuals figuring out how to make as much money as possible by doing as little as possible. Google's approach could have been simply to join the crowd -- setting up various metered services, becoming a "player" in various markets, trying to compete on efficiency and price. Instead, t
    • They are upset about the public getting new capabilities for free.

      My biggest concern is that there is an actual recourse for these agencies that despise the free service. Free online calling is not exactly free - again with the "we pay for internet access" argument that says I've already paid for my data communications line.

      However, what's really scary is that it's entirely plausable that pay-for-phone companies could actually get Congress to stop Google from giving out phone capabilities for free. L

  • "...privacy advocates have a growing list of concerns about everything from its e-mail service to its desktop search function, both of which may make it easier for hackers or government agencies to gather information about individuals without their consent."

    1. Gmail has had its share of security holes.. then again, so has just about every other email service. Nothing to go getting your knickers in a twist over. If you want serious security, you get yourself a professional email service, anyways. (And

  • Not that I follow Anne Rand's socioeconomic agenda, but sometimes her point is valid.

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