Google is selling shares to raise about $4 billion. What could they be buying?
: LATER: See this tidbit from the later Wall Street Journal story:
While Google’s plans for the cash remain a mystery, the company left a clue that suggests the size of the offering wasn’t arbitrary. The number of shares Google plans to sell is 14,159,265. Those are the first eight digits that follow the decimal in the value of pi (3.14159265), which is an infinite number that represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It’s a figure that Google’s cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were both raised by math teachers and studied computer science, no doubt are familiar with. Asked about the figure, a company spokesman simply replied, “the document speaks for itself.”
Am I the only one who finds that too-cute-by-half? If this bubble ever bursts and little old ladies are left penniless, this is the kind of arrogant business-as-playground that doesn’t sound so darling on the other side of the curve. In itself, it’s no big deal, of course, just an inside joke. But it’s another of many signs of Google’ arrogance.
