Google's Playboy Issue

Despite the interview, Google said nothing about delaying the startup of its Dutch auction IPO pricing.

Google announced on its IPO Web site Thursday that it planned to start an auction at about 9 a.m. EDT to determine the price of its shares.

Besides the Playboy issue, Google is also contending the ongoing tech meltdown spurred by weak outlooks at companies like Cisco (CSCO) and Hewlett-Packard (HWP). Some observers had wondered if that alone would delay Google's offering.

Google has remained mum on that issue. The company stirred up Wall Street on Tuesday by saying that registration would end at the close of business today. That news came on the heels of Google's $300 million-plus settlement of a pair of nagging disagreements with big rival and longtime investor Yahoo! (YHOO).

Google has shown remarkable growth in recent years based on the success of its pay-per-click search-engine advertising business. But investors had increasingly grumbled over the last month about Google's stinginess in public discussions of its business prospects, a capital structure giving its co-founders unassailable voting control, and the richness of the proposed price range for the company's stock.

Whether this commentary will lead to an offering price below the proposed $108 to $135 price range, or whether it is simply trash talk that will be obliterated by big-spending bidders, remains to be seen. Injecting uncertainty into the whole affair is the expected bigger-than-usual participation, as far as IPOs are concerned, of retail investors in Google's auction.

The deal is expected to raise north of $3 billion and value the company at some $36 billion, putting it in rarefied air indeed.

To participate in Google's Dutch auction of its shares, investors will need a bidder ID, obtained in the registration process. They'll also need an account at one of the brokerages that is underwriting the IPO, and will have to meet that firm's particular qualifications for bidding on Google shares.

By permitting investors to submit bids for as few as five shares in its offering, Google has lowered a usual investment hurdle; on the other hand, the company has raised that hurdle with a share count that puts the expected per-share price at more than five times the usual figure for an IPO.

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