By 
Larry Page and Sergey Brin – the under-40 co-founders of Google, have agreed to sell $5.5 Billion in stock over the next 5 years. They currently hold a combined 59% of shares which gives them a controlling interest of the company. They can essentially do whatever they want. But not for long.
After the sale of the $5.5 Billion they’ll no longer have controlling interest. Guess how much they’ll have left? That’s the crazy thing…. even $5.5 Billion later they’ll have 48% ownership of the company. Plus Eric Schmidt’s 10% and the trio can still do pretty much whatever they want.
The initial purpose of keeping controlling interest was to ensure the company sticks to their “Don’t Be Evil” mantra. This isn’t an Android-only story, but I think it’s important to keep perspective on Google as a whole. This could CERTAINLY affect the future of Android. The “open source” movement tends to have a much different outlook on how business should work than a company focused on corporate profit and pleasing stock holders.
But in all honesty, 48% is a pretty huge percentage and unless they have some bizarre self-destructing POV, one would think 2% of the remaining stock-holding population would agree with whatever ideas they’re trying to push. By the way, they’ll sell the stock over a 5 year period in order for GOOG to maintain stability in the stock market.
[Via Associated Press]
Interesting move, I wonder what made them go that route? Although 48% is still more than enough to do whatever they want, as mentioned.
I am not sure what you mean by “ownership”. If you mean voting power, then you are correct. They do not own 59% of Google shares because that would worth over $100 billion. I know they are rich, but not that rich. The reason is each of their share has 10 voting count. But once they are sold, each share only has 1 voting count.
Your point in the last paragraph remains correct because 48% is practically majority voting power. For the most part, they are pretty good at making sure Google as close to their “Don’t Be Evil” mantra as they possibly could.
By the time they sell off this 5billion… they might still owe more than 50% depending on how the GOOG moves..
lame i’d prefer if these guys were in 100% control of google i don’t want corporate america ruining the only good company left in the world
@Jeff… I don’t think you understand how corporate financing (see “stocks”) works…
I was nervous until I read that they would still hold majority. If Google ends up in the hands of some greedy corporation who could care less about “do no evil” we could be in for some major problems given all the information they have.
I still refuse to ever get involved in cloud computing (unless I’m forced) the same way I refuse to put personal information in Google Docs. Some info is OK but I can’t have my tax information, social security, 401K info etc. I’m just not ready to put that trust into a corp yet.
@ Derrick..
I agree..Basically it will turn into another version of comcast….
But damn….5.5 Bil and they still owe 48 percent of stocks?….
If that isn’t successful I don’t know what is….
This is all part of the SKYNET plan. They will sell off so that they can remain rich and then it will be purchased, with all information intact to the future SKYNET owners. Beware!!
Staggering math.. 5,500,000,000 Divided by 5 years = 1,100,000,000 per year Divided by 12 months = 91,666,666.66 per month Divided by two people = 45,833,333.33 a month… Forget the lottery commercial about cheese, heck it would be “I can buy all these cheese factories”