Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Market Shaky about Google (GOOG) Co-Founder's Return

Although there has been the news that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) may be the subject of an anti-trust investigation into its dominance in the search segment of the Internet, that probably isn't the reason the share price of the company has been under pressure since the news co-founder Larry Page was returning as CEO.

It's the uncertainty surrounding Page himself, who has made the types of comments that make shareholders or potential shareholders nervous.

Page wants to revamp the company in order to eliminate a lot of what he sees as bureaucracy which interferes with the performance and innovation at the company.

While that's not a bad goal, what concerns shareholders is whether or not Page actually has the ability to discern the difference between real problems and those he views from his sometimes odd way of looking at things.

In other words, are his changes going to help or hurt the company.

Page has already started hacking away at middle management, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it won't be until shareholders see deeper into what he's planning that they'll make a decision on the company and Page.

For now it appears they're pricing that uncertainty into the shares of Google, which will probably waver some until things work themselves out and get clearer.

Google was trading at $571.49, dropping $16.19, or 2.75 percent, as of 1:25 PM EDT.

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