As you might imagine, everyone has something to say about Google’s registration for a stock offering that could raise $4 billion. Consider the initial IPO last August brought in $1.7 billion and that Google already has some $3 billion in cash and cash-equivalants.
USA Today: Matt Krantz deftly puts the amount into context. Not only is Google trying to raise more more than some public internet companies are worth, it would be the most raised by any internet company since 1999 and the largst secondary offering for any U.S. company since 2000. The amount on hand “is more than 80 percent of the companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, including eBay, Best Buy and Southwest Airlines, according to Capital IQ data. Adding $4 billion would give Google a savings account bigger than 90% of the S&P 500 companies, including Boeing, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart, Capital IQ says.”

Scott Kessler, S&P analyst (USAT): Kessler sees it as an “arms race” with Microsoft ($37.8 billion in cash) and Yahoo ($3.4 billion).

Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch:  “Perhaps only Google and the unreconstructed engineers who run it would use pi to derive a number of shares to sell in a secondary stock offering. ... The market chatter is that Google is planning to buy its way into China.

Andrew Kessler, Silicon Valley investor and analyst (NYT): “The stakes have gone up. ... When you have to throw a billion dollars like Yahoo did to buy a minority position in a Chinese company, that is sort of telling you that their organic growth isn’t what it used to be. Maybe their existing model, maybe it’s played out.”

Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley (WSJ): (Morgan Stanley is one of the underwriters.) “Given Yahoo’s $1 billion purchase of a stake in Alibaba, and Baidu’s IPO, we believe that the minimum cash required to compete globally on the Internet is rising. Assuming that the total proceeds of the offering ... We believe this cash balance could allow the company increased flexibility to consider large [$1 billion plus] strategic acquisitions.” Meeker also sees the cash allowing “the company to compete aggressively against Microsoft in search: including desktop search, which Microsoft will likely include as part of Vista, as well as Microsoft’s adCenter search product for advertisers (currently in beta in France and Singapore), which we expect Microsoft to roll out globally.”