Google to let employees capitalize on option 'forwarddating'

That's not exactly what's going on, but Google is working with Morgan Stanley to create a market where financial institutions can buy vested options directly from employees via a web-based auction system. The benefit for employees is that they can get more money than they would from exercising the stock on the market as prices will factor in potential growth in the future. Why would banks pay for a premium instead of just buying the stock on the open market?

For one thing, instead of paying say $500 for each share, a bank could just pay $25 on the hopes that in a year, the price will exceed $525. By investing in the options instead of the stock, you increase the potential return because you can buy many more $25 options than $500 stocks. Google explains the bigger picture better in their page "The Market for TSOs" and talks about letting employees capitalize on the time value of their options. Hence, forwarddating as opposed to backdating : ).

The other interesting thing readers of this blog may appreciate is that while Goldman did Google's [last] stock offerings (and I speculated that they handled the YouTube aquisition), Morgan Stanley was picked to handle a technical solution for both their innovative online dutch auction IPO as well as this TSO auction system. [Incidentally, I missed the news that Morgan and CSFB underwrote Google's first secondary offering of (Pi-3)E8 shares.]

SOURCE: Official Google Blog

UPDATED: 12/14/2006 8:06pm EST

Behind Google's acquisition of YouTube

You will not get anything out of reading the rest of this post.

Sometimes, the people who don't ask questions know a little something. Following are a list of analysts present during the YouTube acquisition conference call.

Analysts:

Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley
Imran Khan, JP Morgan
Doug Anmuth, Lehman Brothers
Mark Rowen, Prudential
Justin Post, Merrill Lynch
Kevin Allison, Financial Times
Daniel Arnell[?], ABC News
Victor Anthony, Bear Stearns
Laura Lach[?], Time Magazine

Also, if Goldman handled the acquisition details, why have they been getting more Google business? Was it because they got on Google's good side after hanling their secondary stock offering almost for free?.

SOURCE: Seeking Alpha [via Google]

It's been said that Facebook is the new Google

An ex-googler who managed Page Creator said that Facebook is "the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago". Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Page Creator, but when you think of the best places to work, Google is no longer the indisputable choice for most [new ]software engineers [forget Goldman]. Blake Ross, creator of the alternative browser Firefox, co-founded a startup called Parakey to develop a web-based operating system. Now, he's still doing that, but now he's [just ]working for Mark Zuckerberg.

SOURCE: DealBreaker [at which a blogger dramatically understates Blake's contribution to Firefox: "they surfed the net a lot using Firefox, not Explorer"]

Time Machine: Rough times ahead for GOOG?

Institutional shareholders losing faith in Google?

Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Jennison Associates have each dumped roughly 35 percent of their entire holdings of Google stock. Alliance Capital Management has sold 13 percent of their stake, and Wellington Management has unloaded 18 percent of their shares.

It's not like they liquidated the majority of their holdings, but I thought I should pass this along. FYI, I'm still holding on to my one share of Google stock (but for how long?)

SOURCE: FuckedGoogle [via Xooglers [via Digg]]

drafted @ 4:23 AM 3/12