Google IPO Continues Despite Playboy Boob
Google’s IPO ran into another problem last week with investors being allowed to start bidding on the company last Friday. Google’s founders will appear in an upcoming issue of Playboy magazine which will be on the shelves this Friday. Although the interview was apparently held before the IPO hype, the Playboy interview may have broken US Securities laws over pre-IPO “quiet periods”. The interview controversy just adds to the twists and turns that Google has been going through while trying to launch their highly watched and unorthodox $3.3 billion initial public offering.
In the filing with the SEC, Google said it does not believe its involvement in the Playboy article constitutes a violation of “quiet period” rules.
According to Neowin.net Google is saying the magazine article contains numerous misinformations about the company, and that potential investors should not consider it when deciding whether to buy shares in the company. More from Neowin.net:
One of the mis-facts in the article was the statement that Google’s Gmail service has 200 times more storage than the company’s competitors, however, as Google was quick to point out in their latest Securities and Exchange Commission filings on Friday, its competitors have quickly closed the gap and now offer similar storage sizes to Gmail.
Other incorrect statement was that 65 million people worldwide use Google’s search engine, each day. Google contends that is a monthly, not daily, count of domestic visitors to its site.
The article also said it had about 1,000 employees; Google currently has about 2,292 employees.
But, in the end, you have to ask: Who really reads the articles in Playboy anyway?
