InsideGoogle

Google Open House Poorly Attended?

The AP is reporting that Google’s open house, its first-ever annual shareholders meeting, was attended by far less people than expected. They claim that fewer than 200 people showed up, while Google had planned for at least 300.

I don’t know. 60-70% capacity ain’t bad. Perhaps that’s exactly what Google was expecting. The article does go on to say that Google had plans in place in case of overflow, and advised people to arrive early, although none of that proved to be necessary.

Most of the meeting involved the big 3 of Page, Brin and Schmidt fielding questions about Yahoo, Microsoft, the lack of stock split plans and employee compensation, all typical shareholder stuff. One guy seemed really dissapointed:

George Chandler of Placerville was among the was one of the first shareholders to ensure he didn’t miss anything.

“I thought it would be different from the typical shareholder meeting because Google is so innovative and I thought the meeting would reflect that,” Chandler said. “When I looked at the agenda, I was looking to see when the dancing girls were scheduled to come on.”

According to the Washington Post, a good percentage of the attendees were employees, who are also shareholders. One asked when Google News was finally leaving beta. Co-founder Sergey Brin answered that some improvements still need to be finished, also saying that “Beta is a matter of pride.” Eric Schmidt also indicated that while Google’s growth would eventually slow, it won’t any time soon (so expect several more mammoth earnings reports).

Naturally, everybody got free food.

“Their presentations were very impressive, I hope a lot of people were listening to it on the Internet,” she said. “And the food was great.”

You can watch a webcast of the event here.

May 12th, 2005 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Stock Market, General | 6 comments