Print

Mail

wiki links

Google shareholders get festive at annual meeting

Google Inc's stock price has been lagging the overall market so far, but that did not seem to bother several hundred mostly festive shareholders who attended the search leader's annual meeting.

About the only letdown during the 75-minute session on Thursday came when Google chairman Eric Schmidt said the company has no plans to split its stock, reiterating a stand that the board has consistently taken. The question comes up frequently because of Google's lofty stock price, which finished on Thursday at US$461.47.

But Google shares have not fared so well so far this year, gaining just US$0.99, or 0.2 percent, since the end of last year. Meanwhile, the bellwether Dow Jones industrial average has climbed 6 percent while the Standard and Poor's 500 index -- of which Google is a component -- has increased by 5 percent.

Google's stock has performed much better over the long haul, a factor that no doubt contributed to the convivial mood of the few hundred shareholders crammed into a small room at Google's Mountain View headquarters. The shares have increased more than fivefold since Google's initial public offering in August 2004.

Just as it had in its two previous annual meetings, Google buttered up the crowd beforehand by feeding them a free lunch from the same cafeteria that provides free meals to employees.

Los Angeles resident Lauren Babbette, who has owned about 30 shares of Google for the past two years, was so impressed with the hospitality that she got up during the meeting to thank Schmidt for treating her much better than she was last week when she attended Berkshire Hathaway Inc's annual meeting.

"I was so depressed after I got off the plane [returning from the Berkshire meeting] that I needed to go to some place with a little spirit like Google," Babbette said in an interview after the meeting. "I was treated like gold here and it's such a fun-loving place."

Preserving Google's famously collegiate atmosphere while also expanding into new markets represents the company's biggest challenge, Schmidt told reporters during a question-and-answer session before the start of the annual meeting.

Google has hired nearly 10,000 employees since the end of 2004 and still expects to add thousands of more workers before this year is over.

"In the last year, my biggest worry has been scaling the business," Schmidt said. "When you grow this quickly, you are bringing in employees who believe they understand the Google vision, but there is always the possibility you will lose the formula."

In other comments to reporters, Schmidt said Google has no interest in entering the bidding for Dow Jones and Co or Reuters Group PLC, which both received takeover offers this month. He predicted the company would clear all the necessary regulatory hurdles to complete its planned US$3.1 billion acquisition of ad distributor DoubleClick Inc by the end of the year.

Google's expansion has been fueled by its dominant position in the rapidly growing Internet ad market, which is expected to propel the company's annual revenue beyond the US$15 billion mark this year.

This story has been viewed 1296 times.