From: Matt Oristano <Matt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: April 30, 2004 10:26:16 AM PDT
To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: "Why I won't be a Google IPO Investor
Dewayne:
Great post at Red Herring re Google. An excerpt follows.
Regards,
Matt
Why I won't be a Google IPO investor
First, there is the problem of Google's fanatical confidentiality fetish...
The problem is that the IPO will happen not for the benefit of new
shareholders but those owners who today hold all the cards and astonish
Wall Street with their iron-clad confidentiality agreements and refusal to
provide would-be investment bankers with financial information.
"Google exists to make information accessible and useful," the Journal
begins, contrasting the company's mission with its culture, which is built
on preventing access to information. For example, Web sites that sign up
for the Google AdSense program agree that they cannot share information
about "click-through rates or other statistics about site performance"
provided by Google making it impossible for site publishers to share
information and understand how Google is treating them. Google is actually
very selective about what information will be free, no matter how much
information wants to be free, in Stuart Brand's famous coinage about the
nature of knowledge in the information age.
full post at <http://blog.redherring.com/MT/archives/main/000188.html>