CEO Eric Schmidt Discusses Google Growth
Mylene Mangalindan has a great interview with Google CEO, Eric Schmidt in today's WSJ. The full article is available online to subscribers, but here is a snippet...

WSJ: You've been quoted saying that an IPO would simply be a financing event. If you're profitable, why do you need a financing event?

Mr. Schmidt: What I always say is that we are fortunate at Google that our business generates enough cash that we have not had the kind of pressure to raise money that many other companies have legitimately had. And the board had the wisdom to not do anything prematurely.

There are always other reasons to go public -- either liquidity, venture returns, the ability to do acquisitions. These are well-known. But one that typically forces it is not present at Google and we don't foresee it to be present. So we've had the luxury of thinking about this question and we continue to think about it.

We've told the company that we will run the company the same way, whether it's a private or public company.

WSJ: Has the preparation for a possible IPO gotten in the way of running the business?

Mr. Schmidt: The IPO discussion has not materially changed the way we do anything except that we're more careful within public settings. I think inside the bigger change has been that we now have hundreds of engineers and so it's not quite as informal a communication style. But that's not related to this IPO question. At the board meetings, in the management meetings, we don't talk about the elephant in the room. I know this is hard to imagine.

Update: Thanks to Gary for finding the free link to the article.
Andy Beal | permalink | +marktd |