The king of the Internet search world is mulling a move to go public next year. Reporting from Washington and New York indicates Google has contacted more than a dozen financial institutions, inquiring about a possible initial public stock offering in 2004.
The same reporting suggested Google's plan might be to sell shares in a massive online auction, which would avoid exaggerated underwriting costs and bypass the traditional Wall Street IPO process. Google has not yet commented on this reporting, but "people familiar with the talks," according to Agence France Presse, "say investment bankers have estimated Google's value at $15-25 million dollars."
The unobtrusive looking Google.com has become the unquestioned Internet search leader in just a few short years, its very name having become a common-usage verb for Web searching. Google is used for an estimated 33 percent of English searches on its own, according to comScore Media Matrix. Google's actual search percentage could turn out to be higher, since it is also used for underlying searches by several of the Internet portals it conquered, including Yahoo.
According to the Wall Street Journal, one of the sources of the possible IPO reporting, questions remain unanswered, including the actual banks that will be involved, how many shares Google plans to offer, and the actual final method for distributing the shares.
