Gee, another writeup on Google..

Wired has this nice story on reasons to love Google. For those who do not live with their noses buried deep in news websites, Google filed their IPO today. Meaning that Google's shares can now be bought by the public. Just another regular IPO? Well, Google has never been a regular company, and for all those cynics who feel that once Google goes public, it will stop doing all the geeky and do-not-be-evil things it does now in order to satisfy shareholders, here's some news: Google did not become what it is today by being stupid or by hiring stupid people and their IPO is yet another example of their brilliance and utter disregard for conventional business practices.

• For one, Google's stock will be sold through a dutch auction. Which means that you and I can get our hands on the stock through an internet auction before the fatcats at Wall Street do.
• Larry and Sergey will still have control over Google. The stock will be divided into two gropus, class A and class B with different voting rights. So all those who believe that Google will change as a result of stockholder pressure can rest in peace.
• The document filed with the SEC makes for interesting reading. No bullshit, no trash talking and no hyped up vision of the future. The best part is the reference to Warren Buffet about not "smoothing" results to please the market- "If earnings figures are lumpy when they reach headquarters, they will be lumpy when they reach you."

As an aside, they still retain their geekiness - The value of the IPO is $2,718,281,828 which is the value of Euler's constant to 10 digits.