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04/30/2004: "Google preparing to do battle?"

What's been called the worst kept secret in the dot com business Google is to offer shares to the public. Ok everyone knows that by now, but the question is why? For their "war chest" is the answer.

From meagre revenue of $200,000 in 1999 Google have sky rocketed in recent years now running 600 million searches per day and last year generated a recenue of over $960 million!!

Google hopes to raise $2.7 billion from it's shares and you have to guess that much of this is in preparation to do combat with Microsoft and Yahoo. Yahoo of course have bought out Inktomi and Overture (both last year) and are gunning for Google.
MS and Yahoo also have the advantage that only a portion of their revenue actually comes from their search engines where as 96% of Googles revenue comes from its Adwords program! Google will need every penny for the fight.
[considering 90% of our search engine referrals come from Google you know who we'll support]