Amid all this fuss about the Google IPO, I had never found out why Google was going for a share offering. The company, after all, is profitable, and doesn't appear in any need of fresh capital. I think most people had assumed it was because the staff and founders fancied being paper gazillionaires. But in many ways this is all very badly timed - the company faces proper competition (from Yahoo and Microsoft) for the first time, and its own search is now vulnerable to accusations that it's losing a little of its edge (although it's not nearly as bad as the tinfoil hat brigade would have you believe).
But, anyway, the Economist sheds some light today. It says Google "reached a regulatory tripwire that forces firms with more than 500 investors to disclose almost as much information as firms listed on America's stockmarkets do. In Silicon Valley, where firms often pay workers in shares as well as cash, this is common and often prompts firms to go one extra step to an initial public offering of shares."
So now you know. The rest of the Economist piece - titled "the weakness of Google" - is cautious about Google's prospects. PayPal founder Peter Thiel warns of the "tremendous distraction" of IPOs and quarterly reports, while the newspaper warns that in areas like online ads and operating system-like functions, Google is less a leader, more a novice. "Google," it says, "is not certain to be an internet winner".
