May 13, 2005

Small (retail) investors had a seldom-seen opportunity to ask questions at top executives at Google yesterday, but some chose mostly upbeat topics of inquiry at the company's very first stockholder's meeting.

Google's executives used the opportunity to address the company's potential for growth abroad, its competition against Yahoo and Microsoft and its efforts to keep employees motivated.

"We're just getting started," said Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive.

The meeting, held at Google's Mountain View headquarters, known as the Googleplex, attracted about 200 people.

As expected, investors who spoke at the microphone were largely in a good mood. Many have profited handsomely from the company's stellar stock performance.

Since the initial public offering last year, Google shares have leapt nearly 170 percent to $228.72.

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Many of Thursday's questions were routine. But a few elicited some nuggets of new information:

Executives said that they have no intention of splitting Google stock for now, despite its high price compared with other companies'.

They are also hoping to expand a high-profile project to digitize books in libraries. Adding more overseas libraries may put to rest the concerns of some Europeans -- particularly the French -- that Google's database might bypass literature that is not in English.

Larry Page, Google's co-founder, stressed that the libraries already in Google's print project -- four in the United States and one in England -- have large collections of non-English books.

Like most shareholder meetings, Google's was a formality. The company's nine-member board ran unopposed and was re-elected; the independent auditor, Ernest & Young, was renewed; and 7 million shares were added to the employee stock plan.

Virtually all shareholder votes were cast in the weeks before the meeting. Only the ballot of Sergey Brin, Google's other co-founder, was collected during the proceedings.

Investors were given yellow bracelets and were for the most part bused in from a parking lot at a nearby amphitheater. One man came to the microphone to complain that he had a hard time finding the meeting, saying, "Maybe I should have used Google maps."

Only shareholders were allowed to attend. The Chronicle monitored the proceedings by Webcast.

Schmidt acknowledged that Google's growth will ultimately slow as the company's popularity increases, a phenomenon referred to as "the law of large numbers."

"All companies that go through our so far very strong growth will see some diminution of growth rate over time," Schmidt said. But he added that it is impossible to know when such a slowdown would take place.

Source: SF Gate

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