As we begin the trek to grandmother's house, it's worth reflecting on what we have to be thankful for. The answer? When it comes to money, most of us have a lot less than we did a year ago. But for those of you who have your health and your families to comfort you, it will cost much less to buy the gasoline to visit than it would have in July. And as you're driving to visit those families -- consider how much less you lost in the last year than the world's 10 biggest losers.
According to the web site, The Business Sheet, those unfortunate people suffered a mind-boggling $176 billion in lost stock market value in the last 12 months. It turns out that 52% of the losses were suffered by three executives based in India. Here they are:
Anil Ambani - $32.5 billion. Ambani heads Reliance Communications that invested $500 million in Dreamworks earlier this year.
Lakshmi Mittal- $30.5 billion. Mittal heads ArcelorMittal which has suffered from a decline in the price of steel.
Mukesh Ambani -$28.2 billion is Anil's brother and controls Reliance Industries, a petrochemical manufacturer.
These are some other folks that make The Business Sheet's list:
Sheldon Adelson -$30 billion. I did consulting work for Adelson about 22 years ago and he is quite a character. His Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS) casino is suffering from the economic slowdown and he's had some trouble with debt.
Warren Buffett -$13.6 billion. As I posted, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) has had some problems this year.
A look at the new Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) proxy shows that founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were each paid $1 for their work in 2007. Steve Jobs has done the same thing at Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Of course, the two Google founders each have about $13 billion in stock and Jobs is also rich as Croesus.
The $1 salary is a bit of theater. It says that the compensation of senior management will be built on the stock price. If it does not do well, all we have is that $1.
The gesture does not even fool idiots when the share price is down and the management is wealthy. Even with Google off from a high of $747 to its current price of $450, Brin and Page retain wealth which is beyond most investors' wildest dreams. The level of their salaries has no meaning.
Google shareholders would be much happier if Brin and Page plundered the company for tens of millions in compensation provided that they get the stock back over $700. The $1 salary is just an insult.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
We know that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) exec David Drummond has said that he's not fond of the proposed acquisition of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) by software giant Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). Drummond indicated that he believes Microsoft could influence the internet too much like it has done in the PC market. What about other Google execs -- what do they think?
Google co-founder Sergey Brin took a potshot last week (although indirectly) by saying "The Internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies. And when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top Web sites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that's unnerving." There you have it, Microsoft. You may soon be unnerving the world's largest search company.
This really is not a new argument, but it's typical of Google, which tends to believe in openness for all Internet users instead of locked-down and proprietary solutions controlled by select companies. Although Microsoft has lost court battles claiming it used illegal, monopolistic tactics to build its company in many ways, nothing of the sort has tarnished Google's doors yet. It simply built the best solution possible, and what do you know -- customers flocked to it. It'll be that position that Google takes as it continues planting the seeds of doubt and discontent as the Micro-Hoo situation continues to evolve.
Already dominating life here on earth, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is now making plans to conquer outer space too.
Google announced the Google Lunar X Prize yesterday at its headquarters in Mountain View, California. The competition offers $30 million in prizes to anyone who can get a robot to the moon and send back pictures and other data.
According to an article in Friday's New York Times, 10 teams have joined the competition. The teams include robotic experts from American universities, an Italian aerospace company, the Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association, and a group of engineers who will work together online.
With Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) shares at an all-time high (giving the search leader a ridiculous $200 billion market cap), the triumvirate leadership of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt have set their collective eyes on yet another jumbo jet to cruise around the world in.
This situation sounds like 1999-era dot-com exuberance madness, but the market has pushed Google to insane levels and the company has billions of cash on hand for anything it needs, as in acquisitions, global computer server farms and huge jets.
In addition to the new jet purchased under the auspices of a company names H211, LLC, the three Google leader have scored an exclusive agreement for airport access at Moffett Field, including the rights for four planes in total. Moffett Field is very close to Google's Mountain View, California headquarters.
The current staple of planes owned and operated by Google's seemingly-eccentric leadership trio includes two Gulfstream Vs, a Boeing 767, and the new Boeing 757. Are other Silicon Valley CEOs jealous? Most likely, yes. But, at least the Google folks are buying 'green' credits to offset the jet fuel they'll be expunging. As a Google shareholder, do you think the company needs a small jet army like this?
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) recently trading up $15.29 to $609.20.
GOOG is expected to report earnings per share (EPS) on October 18th. GOOG October at the money 580 straddle is priced at $32.10. GOOG October option implied volatility of 38 is above its 26-week average of 27 according to Track Data, suggesting larger risk.
The Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) CEO Glenn Murphy hosted a meeting with analysts on October 5th.
Smith Barney says "Mr. Murphy is focused on making the company gets an adequate return on its investments. This includes a focus on the expense of the business. We suspect there will be continued focus on moderating the cost structure and assessing various cost components, including marketing. We think the real estate portfolio is under review." GPS over all option implied volatility of 31 is near its 26-week average according to Track Data, suggesting flat price risk.
Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.
Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), told reporters that he would not be surprised if Facebook remained independent. He also pointed out that the rise of social networks could be good for the big search company: "Social networks are creating lots and lots of content ... and that's more for us to search." Facebook now has almost 30 million active members, putting it behind News Corp's (NYSE: NWS) MySpace.
Brin's observation may simply be a factor of his own experience. Google could have been sold before it went public. Rumors are that Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) had strong interest. Instead, Google watched the price of its stock go from under $100 at the time of its IPO to $545 now. With a market cap of $170 billion, the founders have become wildly wealthy.
The question, of course, is whether social networking is the next search. Can the newest rage on the internet pull in really large investments from online marketers? Did Rupert Murdoch steal MySpace for $565 million?
It may be a year or two before it is clear that independence is the right move for Facebook. By then its founders will either be very rich or full of regret.
This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) was the shining star of the internet bubble in 2000, just before the dot-com crash, and has managed to keep a huge customer base (tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions based on how you calculate it). Yahoo! customers are loyal apparently, even though Google has trounced Yahoo! in recent years in terms of search popularity and overall brand awareness. Like Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo! was founded by Stanford grad students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, so that information on the web could be more easily found back when the web was in its infancy -- 1995.
From 1995 to 2001, Yahoo! grew at a rapid clip, and then saw a downward spiral as advertising fortunes started collapsing at the same time Google's "text ad" advertising model started growing by leaps and bounds. It's pretty obvious by now that Yahoo!'s "one ad for all" approach grew quite stale (and so did its revenues) at the same time Google's "customer relevant" and unobtrusive ad model grew an an inversely proportionate rate. Yahoo! has made great strides on the comeback trail under five-year CEO and Hollywood expert Terry Semel, who has modeled Yahoo! as a "relationship builder" to customers (and gotten them to pay for certain services).
This model is quite opposed to Google's "tool-based" customer model that can't touch Yahoo!'s model for creating and enhancing actual relationships with paying customers, beyond just providing easy internet tools for customers while keeping that "relationship" quite distant. Yahoo! shares spit almost three years ago, but have remained between $29 and $44 per share since that time. By contrast, Google's shares have skyrocketed from $85 in August 2004 to over $460 today. In terms of an investment over the past five years, it's hard to draw a conclusion since Google has been publicly traded for less than three years, while Yahoo! has been traded for quite a bit longer than that.
Back in the roaring 1990s, the state of California had little trouble with its budget. Basically, with the dot-com bull market, the state was reaping huge amounts of revenues from tax-paying tech millionaires who were exercising their stock options.
Well, according to a story in the AP, it looks like history is repeating itself (kind of). In this case, it is mostly Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) that is providing the windfall.
In fact, 16 Google executives will account for $380 million in taxes for 2006 for California, of which about half comes from the co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
There will also be a boost from other comeback tech companies, such as Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ:ORCL), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ), and Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO).
Yet, by far, Google will have the biggest impact. Actually, it has even offset the impact of the slowing real estate market.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.
As expected, the overnight jump in Google shares based on the Q3 results the Internet company had after the bell Tuesday was nothing short of a home run -- literally. GOOG shares closed at around $426 on Thursday evening, and then 30 minutes later Google announced its latest quarterly results, and again the company easily passed consensus expectations for revenue and profit.
Can anything stop Google? It seems like nothing can these days. Friday morning, GOOG shares opened to the tune of nearly $456 per share, quite a nice overnight jump. For the week, GOOG shares closed at $459.67, an impressive jump of $33.61 or 7.89% from Thursday's close.
With Google gaining almost 8% overnight, the estimates from many analysts started their bull run again, with Jim Cramer bumping his estimate from $500 to $560 per share along with Citigroup going for the jugular and a $600 price target. Will Google get there?
It seems that Google can do no wrong as it constantly blows past quarterly estimates again and again, while competitor Yahoo!'s shares are in the doghouse. And although Yahoo! remains the #1 overall visited web property, Google is catching up fast. Adding Youtube to the mix may mean Google will be the largest diversified Internet company in terms of eyeballs very soon. Now, if it can start making money with all those eyeballs beyond search advertising, the sky won't even be the limit. Stay tuned for more quarters and we'll all see.
Here are a few blogging highlights for Google from this past week:
A garage? Has Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) finally lost it?
Not really. You see, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin built Google, they rented out a garage (the company was incorporated on September 7, 1998). It was about 1,900 square feet – and, of course, ultimately turned into a $125 billion empire.
It's something that happens with some frequency in Silicon Valley. For example, in 1939, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started their legendary company from a modest garage (Hewlett-Packard Company, NYSE:HPQ, now owns it).
As for the Google garage, it is based in Menlo Park and will now become a Silicon Valley landmark of sorts. Oh, there is even a hot tub on the property. But, apparently, the co-founders did work tirelessly on their search engine.
On the Google corporate site, you can get some info on the early history.
The office offered several big advantages, including a washer and dryer and a hot tub. It also provided a parking space for the first employee hired by the new company: Craig Silverstein, now Google's director of technology.
Already Google.com, still in beta, was answering 10,000 search queries each day.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates InvestorOffering.com.
After having followed this rather bizarre story for a few months now, it seems that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have settled with an aircraft restorer that was hired by the pair. The Google co-founders hired renowned Oklahoma aircraft desginer and restorer Les Jennings to customize a Boeing 767 that the pair bought for personal use.
The requests from the pair delved into the odd and mysterious (and expensive), from hammocks swinging from the ceiling to presidential-quality state rooms and dining rooms for the pair and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Both Page and Brin accused Jennings of leaking secret details about the Boeing plane to the press, in breach of a court-ordered confidentiality clause, and they took Jennings to court over this. As of today this suit has been dropped by Brin and Page, although the original breach of contract suit will still press forward.
The original suit accused Jennings of not completing requests on time as per the contracted schedule. Apparently this will all press on now as planned, even though the charges against Jennings for actually talking about the plane publicly have now been dismissed.
Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.
From last week's feeding frenzy over results from the Internet and computer behemoths -- Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft -- let's focus in on the difference between the two most direct competitors from that bunch (whether the companies admit it or not): Google and Yahoo! Yahoo's earnings were, by all accounts, excellent.
I love it when the quarter is described only as "meeting analyst expectations," who cares? A company's results should be determined by more fundamental measures such as competitive gains, profit gains, growth (realistic), and EPS: not by "analyst expectations." But, I digress.
Yahoo! profit dipped from last year, mostly because the company sold quite a few Google shares in the year-ago period to make the quarter shine. Revenue increased 26% to land at $1.58 billion. Result: YHOO shares fell nearly 18% right after the announcement. Oh my -- as always, the market lost its head (not sure if it has one).
Google results were stellar and blew away "analyst estimates" by every measure -- $721 million in profit on sales of $2.46 billion. With a $2.33 EPS figure and a 77% revenue increase, Google's second quarter just upped the bar once again for the search giant. Result: GOOG shares fell almost all day before the earnings were released and slowly gained in after-hours trading. I still feel that Google shares are overvalued, but the company does continue to have incredibly impressive quarters. Will Google's sky slowly fall one of these quarters? Hard to say, but if it continues to give customers what they want and serve ads that work for the customer, Google's sky may just remain blue for a long while.
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were hoping to be throwing some massive mile-high parties by now. Instead their party plane is weighed down by lawsuits.
According to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, Page and Brin's private jet is the subject of multiple lawsuits over its renovations -- originally budgeted to take ten months and cost $10 million. Page and Brin bought the used Boeing 767 widebody, designed to carry 180 passengers, as a private jet last year and promised to use it to take lots of their friends to places like Africa.
Hey, I might like to do things like that if I was a billionaire. Don't worry, shareholders. The tab for the jet is not on Google's books. This is a private plane, technically owned by a holding company called Blue City Holdings, LLC.
The plans for the plane reportedly were to include a "lounge" for Google Chief Exec Eric Schmidt, two "state rooms" for Brin and Page, a dining room, and additional seating for passengers (near the back, of course). Apparently designer Leslie Jennings had to accommodate strange requests from Brin and Page, including having hammocks installed hanging from the plane's ceiling. I'm imagining a tropical feeling at 35,000 feet right now, maybe.
Page and Brin had reportedly had a few spats over the size of the beds in their bedrooms. Schmidt reportedly had to step in and say, "Sergey, you can have whatever bed you want in your room; Larry, you can have whatever kind of bed you want in your bedroom."
With Sergey Brin transversing to Washington this week to meet with lawmakers (and apparently their stuffed-shirt attitudes) on net neutrality, he's also in the hot seat for referencing that Google should not have censored its results on its Chinese search site -- and that Google may just leave China altogether. While this seems like a far-fetched statement -- with China being the fastest-growth internet country on the planet -- it does harken back to Google "doing no evil". China's repressive communist regime and inexcusable human rights travesties make it a target for many critics, yet more U.S companies have set up shop there for the incredible cost savings. These companies apparently don't mind "doing a little evil" if it translates into profits for shareholders, right?
Well, Google may be in the decision mode to exit China completely, insofar as its China domain (www.google.cn), leaving its worldly Google domain (www.google.com) intact, although the Chinese government would sure block all remaining access to the local domain as well. This is quite a reversal from Google's earlier stance, and regarding the "right thing to do" for civilization and to fall inline with Google's mantra of "do no evil" this is, strangely, a welcome admission from the Google folks.
A look at the new 
Already dominating life here on earth, 
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Google Inc
As expected, the overnight jump in Google shares based on the Q3 results the Internet company had after the bell Tuesday was nothing short of a home run -- literally. GOOG shares closed at around $426 on Thursday evening, and then 30 minutes later Google announced its latest quarterly results, and again the company easily passed consensus expectations for revenue and profit. 
After having followed this rather bizarre story for a few months now, it seems that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have 
From last week's feeding frenzy over results from the Internet and computer behemoths -- Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft -- let's focus in on the difference between the two most direct competitors from that bunch (whether the companies admit it or not): 
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were hoping to be throwing some massive mile-high parties by now. Instead their party plane is weighed down by lawsuits.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop: The looming credit crisis
Closing Bell: Dow down 7.7%; GE, YHOO, MS fall, PGI, MNT soar
Bet on T&A with J&J (JNJ)
