The big news late yesterday was that Google announced a second round share offer – on the first anniversary of their IPO.
In their now-to-be-expected kooky way, their planning to sell 14,159,265 shares, which of course is derived from the value of pi.
At the current valuation for their stock, this would bring in another $4Bn, on top of the approximately $3Bn they have sitting in the bank currently.
Why do they need that money? Is the question on many lips. There’s been many project been floating around with Google’s name attached, among them, becoming a WiFi provider.
S&P analyst Scott Kessler view is that with Microsoft ($37.8 billion in cash) and Yahoo ($3.4 billion) having a ton of cash in the bank, Google needs the money to be able to compete in the global Internet market, in an “arms race” as he puts it.
Acquisitions would appear to be an obvious use of the money. To date Google hasn’t had to spent that much when it’s brought companies in to its fold, as it’s bought them at early stages, but perhaps their future targets are larger now.
Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley clearly feels the same, “this cash balance could allow the company increased flexibility to consider large strategic acquisitions.”
Of the names that we’ve heard being knocked around as possible targets for a Google purchase including Tivo and Infospace and a number of Chinese companies.
Interesting extracts from the S-3 filing reveal some areas that they think are threats.
We face significant competition from Microsoft and Yahoo.
We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, and particularly from other companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. Currently, we consider our primary competitors to be Microsoft Corporation and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft recently introduced a new search engine and has announced plans to develop features that make web search a more integrated part of its Windows operating system or other desktop software products. We expect that Microsoft will increasingly use its financial and engineering resources to compete with us. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have more employees than we do (in Microsoft’s case, currently nearly 14 times as many). Microsoft also has significantly more cash resources than we do. Both of these companies also have longer operating histories and more established relationships with customers and end users. They can use their experience and resources against us in a variety of competitive ways, including by making acquisitions, investing more aggressively in research and development and competing more aggressively for advertisers and web sites. Microsoft and Yahoo also may have a greater ability to attract and retain users than we do because they operate Internet portals with a broad range of content products and services. If Microsoft or Yahoo are successful in providing similar or better web search results compared to ours or leverage their platforms to make their web search services easier to access than ours, we could experience a significant decline in user traffic. Any such decline in traffic could negatively affect our revenues.
Other headline include
We expect our revenue growth rate to decline and anticipate downward pressure on our operating margin in the future.
We rely on our Google Network members for a significant portion of our revenues, and we benefit from our association with them. The loss of these members could adversely affect our business.
New technologies could block our ads, which would harm our business.
We’ve had hackers doing all sorts of naughty things in the past, but one thing I heard about recently is new to me: 
It seems people are getting less civilized by the day: In a scene reminiscent of the riot caused by the 
Russian Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is now the person who has spent the 
This week, it seems like we have another nice example of people in government being quite the opposite of liberal and interfering with technology: Various suit-wearing, self-important men/women of power have objected to 
Fancy getting all very Mission-Impossible at home or round about? Concerned that you need to protect yourself against International terrorists, your elder brother or members of a rival spy gang? 
It’s an interesting adoption of technology that is used to protect really rather serious things, like armed fighter planes sitting on a runway and power stations, as 
Amazon is testing its new A9 mapping service that lets users view street-level photos of city blocks surrounding a requested address. 
Amazon first introduced street-level photographs of specific addresses as part of its Yellow Pages listings, but the company believes that consumers will find the A9 service a more helpful view than Google mappings satellite views. 
Not surprisingly, the horizon-challenged photographs ably illustrate that there’s none of Bresson’s magic in evidence, with pictures being automatically snapped by trucks equipped with digital cameras and GPS, receivers. 
It seems that there’s a never ending supply of companies ready to shell out for surveys asking the most inane questions. 
Plundering the depths of inanity further, the survey revealed that 34 per cent of females ranked spouse emails as the most important, and 10 per cent more blokes reckoned mobile email would make their lives easier. Fascinating. 
ZyXEL’s new AG-225H Wi-Fi Finder is an ideal tool for hotspot-hunting consumers, hackers, freeloaders and bandwidth bandits. 
The AG-225H claims to be the first gizmo to combine an 802.11a and 802.11b/g USB 2.0 adapter with a fully functional stand-alone hotspot detector, allowing users to turn their laptops into an access point and share their wireless access with others. 
One of the real benefits of carrying around one of these puppies is that you don’t have to wander about with a booted-up laptop to see if there’s any Wi-Fi in the air, so the US$99 AG-225 could prove invaluable for security professionals looking for any unsecured access points. 
There were red faces at HP (or perhaps a wild cackle from a Machiavellian PR guru) after a video presentation on their website leaked details of their next smart-phone release, the iPaq hw6700 series. 
Both iPaqs come with a 3 inch, QVGA 240 x 320 pixel screen, with the handhelds measuring 7.1 x 2.1 x 11.8cm and weighing 165g. Power comes in the shape of a removable 1200mAh Lithium Ion battery 
Of course, it’s always wise to be wary when information is leaked in this manner, and there is something that doesn’t quite sit right in the presentation. 
Viacom have announced that they will be launching a special super-spoddy edition Star Trek Communicator Phone, in association with Sona Mobile. 
We couldn’t find a picture of the actual phone anywhere, although one poster on a Star Trek site claimed it was a re-branded Motorola V3 phone, while another frothed enthusiastically about a “multiplayer, persistent game universe, that uses location based / GPS information to alert you when an ‘enemy player’ is within range so you can do battle!” 
So what’s the deal here? 
A couple of stories have been circulating about the BBC of late, both concerning their adoption of digital TV.