Month: April 2004

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.”

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!

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…

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/