Uh, their reputation in dealings with the DOJ and filthy communist China has
little to do with their price drop. They took a dive because they simply
missed their targets. The speculation that might make their dive deeper is
the mystery of what exactly makes up the bulk of their revenues - some
analysts believe over 50% of their revenue comes from click-fraud. This is
not a tin foil hat conspiracy by bitter goldman-sachs executives.
From: Brian Weeden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: The Hardware List
To: The Hardware List
Subject: Re: [H] Google took a big smelly dump today.
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:18:28 -0700
LOL.
I ask you this - what SHOULD stock price be based on? Market share,
quarterly profits, and price to earnings ratio would be my answer. Is
Google still 1st rate on those terms? Yup. So what caused its stock
price to drop?
Do you remember what happened when Google went public? They did the
whole Dutch auction thing? Do you remember who they pissed off when
that happened? By doing it that way, and not going the usual IPO
route, they cut out all of the usual crowd that makes money on IPOs:
investment banks and the "in" crowd. Instead, they allowed the public
to directly buy shares.
That pissed off a LOT of people in the investment community. For
years they had been making armloads of money off tech IPOs and here
comes a company that has the audacity to treat them just like average
schmos. Do you remember all the media spin on the Google IPO? Every
single talking head was on TV talking about how it wasn't worth $150
and it would tank on its first day and no one should buy it. That was
the establishment with their talking papers trying to get back at
Google for cutting them out. Of course they were all wrong, the stock
WAS worth $150, and is worth a lot more based on Google's earning
reports.
So what has happened lately? Google is getting the crap blasted out of
it for censoring its search results in China. I personally don't like
their decision. And there is another story where Google refused to
turn over search data to the DOJ. What didn't get reported as widely?
MSN and Yahoo forked over that same data months ago without telling
anyone.
Personally, I agree with Groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060129200619260
Quote:
"Here's what I have observed:
When you compete with Microsoft,
your reputation will be sullied in the press.
Having experienced something similar, I can smell it a mile away when
it happens to others. And I'm starting to get that whiff... "
This is no more than the investment community that got burned by
Google taking revenge using the FUD being spread by Google's enemies
(DOJ, China, M$) as an excuse. Call it white collar blackmail or
whatever.
--
Brian
