>Even enormously profitable enterprises can be absurdly overvalued.
>The insiders will cash their chips in time I'm sure. As for the
>rest...
For sure. Google's advantages could evaporate - not overnight (Dwayne's made some good points about their real edge), but someday. And the valuation looks ludicrous. But this is an unusual deal: the founders have reserved big chunks of the shares for themselves - the public would be buying a minority interest. And if insiders tried to sell in serious quantity, the signal would be disastrous for the stock price.
Some of the founders' claims sound like 1998 all over again, though. They don't want to be an ordinary company, they wanna have fun, etc. Right. For now, yeah, but that can't last. The market will make them ordinary.
Doug