Google share options threatens company?

[Brian Turner]

Interesting question the BBC asks - if Google has effectively made all it's employees millionaires via share options, then what happens to the company? Will a workforce of millionaires really want to spent most of their adult life leaving their families to work at the office?

Google, the world's most popular internet search engine, is cruising towards a lesser-known, but very possible business problem - the "all your staff suddenly drive a Ferrari" factor. As the Californian company prepares to float on New York's Nasdaq market, in an initial public offering that will value the firm at as much as $36.3bn (£19.7bn), hundreds of the company's 2,292 staff will suddenly find they are, at least on paper, millionaires.

Some 30 million shares have been assigned to the company's workers - something that has already got the company into a little potential trouble with regulators.

But the bigger question for Google is whether the new found super-wealth of all its employees with generous stock options will affect their work ethic.

Will they all continue to work diligently, or will they instead rush out and buy Ferraris and other sports cars to spend more time racing around the north Californian hills?

Google, which is famed for having a down to earth and even quirky working environment (staff are encouraged to play hockey or musical instruments in their lunch breaks), appears at first hand not to have too much to worry about.

But then, extreme and overnight wealth can do strange things to people. Much like a lottery jackpot winner who always said it would never change his or her life, only to start spending like a madman when the six numbers come in.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3932875.stm

[Pirates]

Very well spotted point in google IPO

[dotcomguy]

very valid point, google would be a great place to work,

I saw that they recruit the worlds greatest "logical" thinkers.

- ex grandmaster chess champions
- people extremely good at board games

etc..

the also hold a google codejam, which is a annual competition to find out the greatest most effient programmers in the world.