What Will Google Do with $4 Billion — More?

Google took investors by surprise in announcing that it would sell additional shares expected to generate US$4 billion. GOOG consequently took a bit of a hit. And now many in blogland are buzzing with speculation about what it means and why the company is doing it.

It's pretty clear there will be many more acquisitions (in Local for certain) and here, if true, is another way to spend the cash. (Here are some more.)

On a related yet somewhat distinct note, the Internet Stock Blog republishes part of Kevin Delaney's "Heard on the Street" column about Google's current share price and why some think it's low.

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I was pointed to Bambi Francisco's broad review of the past year of Google. And here's a relatively interesting take on why Google's selling more stock from The Stalwart.

Excerpts from Google warnings about competition and revenues from the Internet Stock Blog.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Justin

    Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch, has a nice piece too.

    >>The market chatter is that Google will buy its way into China.

    >>It shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that Google would issue shares in a secondary offering, actually.

  2. Greg

    Thanks Justin

  3. Mike Hogan

    If they invest in GoogleNet it could be a tremendous boon for America, but it could also have some scary Orellian prospects. See more here: http://thinklocal.blogspot.com/2005/08/googlenet-echoes-of-orwell.html

  4. Dane MAdsen

    Perchance, does Google’s truncated Pi share offering look to raise some anticipatory cash while the raising is good? Maybe they are raising a part to be able to sustain the inevitable revenue hit they will take as a result of the loss of the GEICO rulings. Google’s ability to generate revenue by allowing/enabling/encouraging others to buy Trademarks built off years and decades of careful (and some really poor) Brand management with impunity has vexed me. Indicative by this ruling and the near term mandates, perhaps I am not the only one confused about why the Do No Evil crowd felt it was immune to the statutes of unjust enrichment

  5. Chris Parente

    Talk about inside baseball! Do others read the
    "ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter" as a tongue in cheek (and very wonky)way of saying we're taking over the world?

    While Google's plans for the cash remain a mystery, the company left a clue that suggests the size of the offering wasn't arbitrary. The number of shares Google plans to sell is 14,159,265. Those are the first eight digits that follow the decimal in the value of pi (3.14159265), which is an infinite number that represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It's a figure that Google's cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were both raised by math teachers and studied computer science, no doubt are familiar with. Asked about the figure, a company spokesman simply replied, "the document speaks for itself."

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