From the Mercury News:
“Google’s innovative initial public offering treats you — the regular investor — as king… Gone are the special favors to wealthy investors. Big institutions won’t have their usual first dibs either. Google will sell at least $2.7 billion of its stock — and probably much more — to the public by having investors bid for shares online. Here’s how it works.”
Google Launches IPO
After months of anticipation, Google announced today its preparation for IPO. The innovative search company proved that it can be unusual in all things, including in the way it will get rich — Google will use auction to determine the price of its shares before going public. Prepare your wallets 🙂 and stay tuned!
About up, Lycos down
Ah, the times a changin’!
Following a facelift, About.com relaunched. What used to a be a decent human-edited directory of unique content is more and more driven by ads which are quite intrusive. So, while the site is up, I give it a thumb or two down.
Lycos, the former king of portal acquisition (It bought HotBot, Wired, etc. in the end of the last century), is not for sale. The likely buyer? This is my speculation, but after AskJeeves’ purchase of the Interactive Search properties in March, it seems another fit in their strategy of expanding marketshare for their sponsored search results. Stay tuned…
Keyword Search Spending Accounts for 35% of the Total Online Ad Spending in 2003
Two months ago WebSage reported that “Search engine marketing drove growth in online ad spending in 2003”. Now, backed by numbers for the whole year, the Interative Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoppers further clarify that keyword search engine marketing was the leading engine of growth for the online ad industry reaching 35% of total online ad spending in 2003.
Putting this number in perspective is a prediction by eMarketer which puts online advertisement between 2.9% and 3.1% for the period 2003 – 2005.
Search Engine Wars on NPR
For Europeans (and not only) in the U.S., the National Public Radio (NRP) is a fresh voice of intelligent news coverage and analysis. In April, NPR started a series “Search Engine Wars”. For a new look at the usual suspects go to:
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2004/apr/google/
QSSI SEO Blog
I’ve been away from the WebSage blog trying to recover from a hard drive failure. In addition, I’ve been busy updating the QSSI SEO blog dedicated to helping government web managers understand the impact search engines have on information availability and outreach programs. I will renew the blog postings soon! Thanks for your patience!