January 13, 2004

Blogging the Google IPO

The Washington Post has a very good story today about the upcoming Google IPO, which I and Jeff Cornwall were discussing yesterday. The story is really about the propsoects for a Google IPO, the intense comeptition in the search industry, and how going public might change Google. But it starts off with a mention of blogs and other online commentary sites.

To get a sense for the level of hype surrounding the possibility that Google Inc. will become a public company this spring, there's at least one surefire way: Google it.

Type "Google IPO" into the vaunted search engine, and within 0.07 seconds, links to 14,000 Web sites come bounding back. The links lead in every direction: online columnists predicting the company's initial public offering of stock will be the first bang of Internet Boom 2.0, discussion threads in which investors pine for a piece of the company, a blogger who insists simply that the Google IPO "is evil."

Most of the sites are in English, but many are in French, German or Japanese. There's even a Web site called "Google IPO Central: Your Unofficial Source for Discussion and News about the Upcoming IPO."