After a false start, Google (GOOG (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GOOG)) is now trading. Up to about $101 in just a few minutes. That is a +19% in one day. Damn I should have done bottom-fishing... buy Google shares low and sell them again. 19%... grrrrrrrr!!!

102.92 USD (21.08 %)...

I thought it was a good buy at $75, since it priced at $85, I would have been shutout if I had bid for them. Looks like Mr. Page and Mr. Brin makes a good bet by reducing the total shares they sold....

Yeah... would that have been a nice quick chunk of change, or what!

But in the long run, it's risky to put much in Google, I think... Talk about competition in a market that's not too hard to break into! Mark Cuban (the starter of broadband.com and owner of the Dallas Mavericks) is even going into the search business. One new tech breakthru and Google could be in trouble. Their advantage seems to be their ability to maintain giant server farms efficiently, as well as their existing base of users. Can they hold their position??

Of course, I didn't think Intel could hang on this long, either, so what do I know!?

Totally agree with Bob. I cannot believe that the stock price keeps on rising. Oh well. According to the Financial Times, Google has the worst corporate governance ranking of any S&P 500 company. The report cites a number of problems with Google's governance:

These flaws, it said, include a dual-class capital structure that gives effective control to insiders, too few outside directors, a lack of stock ownership guidelines for executives and independent directors, a compensation plan that lets the company reprice stock options if the stock price falls, and loans to company insiders.

The proxy adviser assigned Google, the world’s leading Web search engine, a corporate governance quotient of 0.2 out of a possible 100, the newspaper said.