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Search Engine New & Rumors: November 2003

(November 1, 2003 - Westchester County, NY) Google is the current King of Search engines, getting about a third of the 500 million searches that occur on the Internet every day.

Not surprisingly, top competitor Microsoft's MSN Search wants a piece of that action. According to the New York Times, Microsoft has made a bid to take over the much smaller, privately held company, Google - also not surprising: Google doesn't even want to hear about it.

What IS surprising is that Google is moving toward an Initial Public Stock Offering (IPO), scheduled for sometime in 2004. You say that's not surprising enough? Get this: this IPO may be the first of its kind - Google is reported to be exploring an online auction IPO, with shares going to the highest bidders. This could be the first time an IPO online auction has ever happened.

According to the Financial Times, Google is considering "holding a massive online auction of shares early next year in an initial public offering that investment bankers predict could value the internet search-engine company at more than $15bn." The Wall Street Journal described the potential IPO as the most valuable "since the tech bubble burst in 2002."

Do you know how to spell "feeding frenzy?" Stay tuned.