> True, but you're forgetting that IPOs are more about the sizzle than the
> steak - or the promise of sizzle, even. Decades of experience show that
> buying IPOs is financial suicide (unless you're one of the lucky ones
> cut in at the zero hour). But people persist in buying IPOs anyway,
> hoping they'll get the next Microsoft. (Back in the boom, the SEC used
> to do searches for the phrase "the next Microsoft" to sniff out web
> scams.) The last thing you should do is apply rational analysis to IPOs.
The Google IPO may have some meat on it, but it is mostly about sizzle. Google is, after all, just an Internet service which is vulnerable to all kinds of shifts in tastes and changes in the computer industry. I find it hard to believe that this company is worth 2 billion. Innovation? Google services are the product of its people and its organizational culture. Once these people get millions from the IPO, all of that chemistry will bubble over.
Chuck0