Google Will Eat Itself

http://www.googlewilleatitself.com/

by signaler • 12 years ago

473 126 12 years ago

googlewilleatitself.com

Aqueous• 12 years ago

"Current Google Share Price : 495.01 USD"

This hasn't been updated since GOOG was a bit more than a third of what it is now.

But if they actually own 819 shares that is almost a million dollars of stock right now.

Edit: http://gwei.org/pages/google/legalletter1.html

karangoeluw2• 12 years ago

How about a translation?

judofyr• 12 years ago

"click here english translation": http://gwei.org/pages/google/legalletter_e.html

Lerc• 12 years ago

So has it been operating all this time since 2006?

Most interesting would be a graph of proportion of Google owned. Are they gaining or losing ground toward their goal of getting it all. I could see them gaining at an ever diminishing rate.

While this is probably fraud, it's preying on advertisers, which I'd be prepared to allow provided it did the advertising industry permanent harm.

mcv2• 12 years ago

Why would it be fraud? It sounds to me like they're using their advertising revenue to buy Google shares. What's wrong with that?

YZF• 12 years ago

I thought the share class structuring of Google was such that you can never own Google by buying its publicly traded shares?

leoc• 12 years ago

Unless Eric Schmidt is secretly behind this of course. ;)

jusben13692• 12 years ago

Right. Based on the erroneous theory that every single share of a company is publicly available and in the float.

rgbrenner2• 12 years ago

You're right.. Class A is traded publicly. Class B is what's owned by Sergey and Brin, and it has 10 votes per share (vs 1 vote per share for Class A), and allows them to outvote all Class A shares.

Spone• 12 years ago

Sergey and Brin or Larry and Page? ;)

adventured• 12 years ago

Schmidt also owns Class B shares. I believe at the time the B shares were issued, between Brin, Page, and Schmidt they held over 50% of voting control (it was something close to 20/20/10 on voting control).

edit correction: "Mr. Page, Mr. Brin and Mr. Schmidt collectively already control 66 percent of the vote through special Class B shares."

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/stock-split-for-googl...

vesinisa• 12 years ago

Can someone then explain to a layman, why Google shares even have any value? What good is a share, if it's voting power in controlling the company is practically void? Google has never paid any dividend either. Are all the stock investors just speculating that GOOG will pay dividend in the future? Or is it possible that Class B shares will loose their special voting rights at some point so that Class A become instrumental in controlling the company?

junto• 12 years ago

As long as people perceive value then there is value. I think it is as simple as that. Maybe people are waiting on dividends. Snigger...

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

GOOG shares have value because the company has value. They represent a fraction of that value but not an equivalent fraction of management control. Class B shares will eventually all be class A, Eric has converted a tremendous number of his already (they convert when you sell them, its possible they convert on change of ownership which would change them when they were inherited). So fractional ownership represents the fraction of what someone might have to pay to have full ownership.

Cthulhu_• 12 years ago

Well if you take away dividends and voting rights, what remains? I can think of two things:

One, money for Google, at least when they were distributed shares (I don't know if they distribute more from time to time).

Two, a tradeable product. Price determined by supply and demand, supply / demand generated by people wanting to bet the price goes up and people cashing in. Think Bitcoins.

judk• 12 years ago

Like Apple, Google may eventually earn more that it can spend/invest, and then pay a dividend, or be bought back by Google corp.

PhasmaFelis• 12 years ago

As with every company that maintains 51% private ownership, they have value because in the future someone might buy them from you for more than what you paid for them.

Or, to put it another way, they have value because people will pay for them, and people will pay for them because they have value. Isn't finance ridiculous?

thearn4• 12 years ago

I guess it would still have value for those who want to go long, and sell at a higher stock price.

RodericDay• 12 years ago

It's a betting game, upheld by the assumption that as bad as it is, it is the best method we've got to determine the 'value' of a thing (you reach some interesting philosophical questions very quickly this way).

John C. Bogle has written angrily at length about this many times in the past. I don't know enough to say whether I agree with him or not, but "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" was a fun read. He basically pushes forward his thesis that many problems related to corporations and corruption have to do with a transition from "shareholder capitalism" to "manager capitalism".

I read it so long ago that I'm distorting things, but I will always remember that it was way better than the stupid title made it seem.

neotek2• 12 years ago

Well, there's always capital gains when you sell. I'd say investors aren't buying Google stock because they want to control the company, they're buying Google stock because the people who do control the company are doing a good job.

yetanotherphd4• 12 years ago

It's extremely simple:

The only real value a share has is dividends, and dividend-like things (like share buybacks, the whole company being taken private, etc.).

In theory (and practice) the price of a stock is the expected value of the time-discounted sum of its future dividends.

So yes, people are precisely buying GOOG stock because they believe that at some point in the future, they will pay dividends. Google do, after all, have to do something with all their money one day.

Voting is also not very important. In some cases it might be needed to keep the board/executives in line, but for an individual shareholder, the right to vote is of no importance.

jojopotato• 12 years ago

Neat idea, but it looks like the site was last updated in 2005/6.

blueblob• 12 years ago

Yeah, that background is awful.

illumen• 12 years ago

Fashion is so 2001.

Thirdegree• 12 years ago

"202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google."

So close!

jusben13692• 12 years ago

It seems based on that web design we could probably strike 6 - 8 years off the wait. But agree still a fair way to go.

DigitalSea• 12 years ago

This is actually a pretty genius idea, but as pointed out by others this site looks old (evident by the design and inaccurate stock price). I also think the way Google shares work is that you can never truly own a meaningful share of Google via public shares.

terhechte• 12 years ago

It is really old, I think the first time that I saw it was in mid 2001

laureny• 12 years ago

I doubt it, Google went public in 2004.

ama729• 12 years ago

It date back at least to 2005-2006 if you look at their press release: http://gwei.org/pages/press/press.html

The letter from google is also dated 2006: http://gwei.org/pages/google/legalletter1.html

coreymgilmore2• 12 years ago

Especially with the impending stock split. It is more for capital gains than controlling a voting percentage of shares.

woah• 12 years ago

FYI, in many European countries periods and commas in numbers are the reverse of how we use them in English- 405.413,19 is actually 405,413.19

heinz• 12 years ago

No shit, Sherlock?!

maaaats• 12 years ago

Thanks for your contribution..

This , vs . is often a problem, because my bank will issue tables with , used as decimal separator, but copying that into some tool everything breaks because it expects . to be used.

Buge2• 12 years ago

And yet they say "Current Google Share Price : 495.01 USD".

They're not even consistent.

rplnt3• 12 years ago

As for the decimal mark (comma), it's most of the world really. This has nothing to do with grouping in numbers. I find both types of thousands separator (, or .) misleading, pointless and not nice at all. But maybe that's because I grew up in a country that used neither of those.

hessenwolf4• 12 years ago

I have to deal with a lot of millions and billions in work (reinsurance). Thousands separators are so essential to me!!

lclarkmichalek• 12 years ago

Woo click fraud!

gcb0• 12 years ago

which is incredible easy to do and very hard to prosecute... so guess what is the life blood of the industry

fiatjaf2• 12 years ago

If it is so easy why there aren't still millions of people doing it? Why there are still robbers on the streets?

coreymgilmore2• 12 years ago

This is a pretty genius idea. Use Google to buy Google stock. With the current share price, buying shares isn't exactly cheap. But collecting cash from their service is an effective way to reap the benefits of corporate growth in another way.

Similarly: buying Tesla (TSLA) stock when it was cheap because you couldn't afford the Model S....and now you can afford it.

That being said, it would seem that there would need to be a rather large network of sites and AdSense links to earn enough money to buy a share. Reminds me of the cost-benefit ratio of mining bitcoin.

jamesaguilar• 12 years ago

Right, and the sites have to be profitable, and they have to not be spam (otherwise, your revenue stream will likely eventually be shut off).

dictum• 12 years ago

I can't find it now, but I remember seeing a picture around the time AAPL was rising fast (~2011-2012) that showed how much money you'd have if you had bought the equivalent amount of Apple stock that a given Mac cost when released.

So, if you had bought $2000 of AAPL instead of a snazzy Macbook Pro, you'd have X now.

_nedR• 12 years ago

http://abstrusegoose.com/264

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

Similarly: buying Tesla (TSLA) stock when it was cheap because you couldn't afford the Model S....and now you can afford it.

This is how I'm funding my Model S purchase.

LukeB_UK• 12 years ago

So they were committing fraud to try and kill Google?

ivv• 12 years ago

Theoretically, isn't it the case that the more successful they are in generating clicks, the more successful Google becomes, pushing the share piece higher and further out of their reach?

mcintyre1994• 12 years ago

Given how long it's been since this was last updated, I wonder if they're still having any success. It seems Google are probably getting better at fraud handling quicker than they can innovate their fraud - and close to 10 years seems like Google would have a huge advantage by now.

noname123• 12 years ago

For every impression/click payout that the clandestine "GTTP" network garners, Google the company will also have earned some profits off advertisers which'll be transferred to Google's bank account or used to build more infrastructure.

However, suppose GTTP compromise a significant or even 100% of GOOG's total ad payout; there are three possible scenarios:

a) if Adwords is operating at a loss (a la PS3, unlikely), the shares of GTTP will decrease massively, thereby depressing the shares of GOOG. However if GOOG wants to facilitate the transfer of the company of GTTP, it'd continue to operate at extreme loss by transferring more money to GTTP via Adwords loss until the shares goes down minimally $0.001 on OTC market (a la LEH). Then GTTP can acquire a worthless asset.

b) Adwords is generating a net profit more than the payout to GTTP. Net profit not in terms of net income but in the sense that the profit/intangible valuation of Google's use of revenue from GTTP's generated ads to build out infrastructure and human resources. GTTP's activity will then boost the shares of GOOG, given that GTTP generate a fixed amount of money for GOOG; using discount cashflow model, that means whatever GTTP's income cannot outpace the GTTP-GOOG Adwords unit's constantly rising valuation. (Think of this using a shareholder's dividend to cannibalize the company; or using a child's allowance to buy his/her parent).

c) Adwords is generating a net profit but less than the payout to GTTP. Basically a company distributing the bulk of its net profit to shareholders as dividend than using it to reinvest in R&D/infrastructure. In practice, GTTP's internal shareholders would likely revolt given GOOG's business model of growth (vs. say sleepier industries such as utility). But let's suppose say for the sake of the argument, that GTTP shareholders are agreement to cannibalize GOOG, they can do it! Given that the accumulated annual income generated by GTTP outpaces the market valuation of GOOG. (Think of WhatsApp founders cash out of 16B of FB stock or Mark Cuban with Broadcast.com at the height of YHOO's valuation, and the valuation of GOOG or FB decrease enough and/or they kept siphoning income to buy the company at a later time.)

camillomiller• 12 years ago

The point many of you are probably missing here is that this is not a proof of concept but a work of net/digital art, exhibited many times in the past (even at transmediale 2008) but fixed in a defined moment in time (~2006).

I've been a student of one of the authors (Alessandro Ludovico) in 2008, at the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara (Italy).

sentenza• 12 years ago

For all of those who speak German, there's an old episode of CRE [1] in which Tim talks to Hans Bernhard and lizvlx from Austria. They were involved with the project and elaborate a bit about its motivations.

[1] http://cre.fm/cre132-ubermorgen-com

fiatjaf2• 12 years ago

A public-traded company is not the same as a public company. Larry Page and Sergey Brin can still hold all of their stocks and stay at the control of Google.

nostromo• 12 years ago

This reminds me of stock buy-back programs.

The company, using company revenues, to buy the company.

Although now I understand them, when I first heard of them I immediately thought it would lead to a stack overflow...

thatthatis• 12 years ago

If you find this amusing, you should read the book "devil take the hindmost," particularly the section on the south sea bubble.

Tldr: in the south sea bubble it did eventually lead to a stackoverflow

dllthomas• 12 years ago

How did buy-backs figure in that?

raldi• 12 years ago

Just think of them as issuing a negative amount of new stock.

eru2• 12 years ago

Share buy backs are equivalent to dividends, modulo taxes and accounting.

pdkl95• 12 years ago

"No return, no make amends Is this the future or this is how it will end?"

/everything's cool

markmassie• 12 years ago

I see what you did there.

http://www.lyrics.net/lyric/29594334

rgj• 12 years ago

Reminds me of the Ren & Stimpy episode where Stimpy enters his own belly button and disappears.

yetanotherphd4• 12 years ago

Nonsense by people who don't understand free market economics and therefore choose to ridicule it.

Calling themselves artists (as another pointed out) shields them from the criticism they would receive if they clearly stated their point of view.

karangoeluw2• 12 years ago

    <!--Fireworks 8 Dreamweaver 8 target.  Created Sun Dec 11 16:07:50 GMT+0100 ( ) 2005-->

Bud• 12 years ago

Now, let's stop telling Google it's going to eat itself. You're going to give it a googleplex.

omni_• 12 years ago

That background is incredibly distracting.

HillOBeans• 12 years ago

So, in essence, they have worked out a way to be paid in stock shares instead of currency?

tqi• 12 years ago

"We deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms"

The ad supported model isn't ideal, but if these guys have a better idea I'm all ears.

rhapsodyv• 12 years ago

Sorry, but I couldn't stay in this site for more than 10 seconds.. My eyes hurt..

lhgaghl• 12 years ago

I was listening to this song while reading the page, goes good with the flashing background: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBb8e7G4dBk

yc-kjh• 12 years ago

something unexpected will happen long before 202 million years from now.

marincounty• 12 years ago

I'm waiting for duckcuckgo to get some money. If Duckduckgo gets a little bit better--I will just use google's free Api's.

Buge2• 12 years ago

I don't get it. They're paying for the servers for their websites and the content on the websites. They could just as easily keep the money from the ads. So essentially they're just buying the shares out of pocket.

Springtime• 12 years ago

Appears this was created as an art/media installation by Ubermorgen in 2005 [1] that ran for a few years. Some believe it was a hoax [2], although it may have just been a brief but curious experiment.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen#Life_and_career

[2] http://linearfix.tumblr.com/post/21838753641/is-google-will-...

pa_toulou• 12 years ago

This is quite old and has been defunct for years now. It is a collaboration between Ubermorgen and Paolo Cirio & Alessandro Ludovico

For Ubermorgen it was part of a trilogy[1] of art/hacks displayed in art galleries with amazon noir [2] and the sound of ebay [3].

For Paolo Cirio & Alessandro Ludovico it was part of The Hacking Monopolism Trilogy[4] with the same amazon noir and face to facebook[4] stealing a million facebook accounts and auto-populating a dating website with them [5]. They have more info and pics about gwei [6].

[1] http://www.ubermorgen.com/EKMRZ_Trilogy/

[2] http://www.amazon-noir.com/

[3] http://www.sound-of-ebay.com/

[4] http://www.face-to-facebook.net/hacking-monopolism-trilogy.p...

[5] http://www.face-to-facebook.net/

[6] http://www.face-to-facebook.net/gwei.php

hellbreakslose• 12 years ago

has anyone around this project realized that every time you click google adds google is getting money for it as well? and obviously their revenue is 80% while they give you 20% for each click... with that said, no sir google won't eat itself your just making google richer.

level09• 12 years ago

They missed one important point though, hidden network of websites needs to run on servers, and servers cost money. more traffic means scaling and even higher costs.

sharemywin• 12 years ago

I didn't think a majority of Google preferred stock stock is for sale?

govilk• 12 years ago

It seems like the same situation when Porsche kept buying Volkswagen shares till 2009 and in the end losses.

TomMoses2• 12 years ago

Google Will Eat Self is part of a trilogy: http://paolocirio.net/work/hacking-monopolism-trilogy/hackin...

Those guys hacked also Amazon and Facebook, actually there is much more behind that. Those Italians are crazy and geniuses.

TomMoses2• 12 years ago

Google Will Eat Itself is part of a trilogy: http://paolocirio.net/work/hacking-monopolism-trilogy/hackin...

Those guys hacked also Amazon and Facebook, actually there is much more behind that. Those Italians are crazy and geniuses.

Google Will Eat Itself

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