Google Wins Fans With IPO Gains

"I think it was fair -- better than it coming out at 45 and all the mutual funds getting it at 45 and it opening up at 80 or 90," Pessar says. "I think the Dutch auction process is getting a bad rap." Pessar is still holding his Google shares, and is even thinking about buying more.

Another positive of the IPO, says Phillip Thune, president of paid search operator FindWhat.com (FWHT Quote), is the power of the spotlight on Google and its Internet peers. "The attention of this IPO is like nothing anybody's seen, probably, in years," he says. "And every time people talk about Google, they're obviously talking about how Google makes money, which is how we make money."

Thune, who earlier in his career was an investment banker at Alex. Brown, says that the missteps in Google's IPO process -- for example, the Playboy interview and the rescission offer -- have been overblown.

"It seems like there's been a perception that a lot of things are going wrong," Thune says. "I don't think there's been an IPO where every move that the company makes has been in the spotlight [the way] Google has. So I'm not sure that the process was as bumpy as it appears. When thousands of media outlets are watching your every move, the inevitable bumps are going to be magnified." Thune made no investment in Google.

One useful upshot of the Google IPO is that the company now has "a boatload of more cash," says Kevin Lee, CEO of the search engine marketing firm Did-it.com.

With the $1.2 billion the company raised in its IPO and its publicly traded stock, says Lee, it's going to be easy for Google to take advantage of what he calls "undervalued content opportunities" on the Internet -- niche sites that may not be generating any advertising revenue, but could if they partnered with -- or were owned by -- Google.