NO AI, NO PLAGIARISM
How Much Should You Reveal in Playboy?
What can you do if you’re sitting around your dorm room with nothing else to do (or at least nothing else you want to do)? How about starting a business? It worked for Michael Dell, who found assembling and selling computers more rewarding than attending classes at the University of Texas. It also worked for two Stanford graduate students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They came up with a novel (though fairly simple) idea for a search engine that ranked Web sites according to number of hits and online linkages. Because their goal was to organize massive amounts of electronic data, they wanted a name that connoted seemingly infinite volumes of information. They liked the word “googol” (a child’s coinage for a very big number—1 followed by a hundred zeros), but, unfortunately, someone already owned the domain name “Googol.” So Brin and Page did a little letter juggling and settled (as we all know by now) for “Google.”
By 2004, the company that they’d started in 1998 was the number-one search engine in the world. Their next step, like that of so many successful entrepreneurs before them, was to go public, and that’s where our exercise starts. To learn more about this episode in the epic story of Google—and to find out what role Playboy magazine plays in it—read the article, “Google Sets $2.7 Billion IPO” (http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/29/ technology/google), read Google’s Playboy interview https://www.cnet.com/news/google-revealed-in-playboy-interview/, and read the article, “Google Dodges a Bullet” https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/google-dodges-a-bullet/
When you’ve finished reading the articles, answer the following questions:
1. What’s an IPO? Why did Brin and Page take their company public? What disadvantages did they incur by going public? Are they likely to lose control of their company?
2. How does a Playboy interview enter into the Google story? What did Brin and Page do wrong? (By the way, the interview appeared in the August 2004 issue of Playboy; because Google incorporated the text into its revised IPO filing, it’s now in the public domain and available online.)
3. Did the Google founders get off the hook? Was the punishment (or lack of it) appropriate? Quitting school to run Google paid off big for Brin and Page. Their combined net worth as a result of the IPO suddenly skyrocketed to $8 billion. But how about you? Could you have gotten rich if you’d jumped on the Google bandwagon just as it started to roll? Could you at least have earned enough to pay another year’s tuition? To respond to these questions, you need to know two things: (1) the IPO price of Google stock—$85—and (2) Google’s current stock price. To find the current price, go to http://finance.yahoo.com to link to the finance section of the Yahoo.com Web site. Enter Google’s stock symbol—GOOG—and click “Go.” When you find the current stock price, answer the following questions:
a. If you’d bought Google stock on the IPO date and sold it today, how much would you have made?
b. If you owned Google stock today, would you sell it or hold it? Why?
c. What private company would you consider investing in when and if it makes an IPO? (Choose a company that has not already been identified by a classmate.)
Remember to respond to two other students!
below i attached 2 students work to reply to .
“Google Sets $2.7 Billion IPO” (http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/29/ technology/google), read Google’s Playboy interview https://www.cnet.com/news/google-revealed-in-playboy-interview/, and read the article, “Google Dodges a Bullet” https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/google-dodges-a-bullet/
