Google IPO auction gets off to rocky start

The auction for Google's IPO got off to a rocky start on Friday after the it sidestepped a bullet from US securities regulators.

The auction for Google Inc's highly anticipated initial public offering got off to a rocky start on Friday after the Web search company sidestepped a bullet from US securities regulators.

Mountain View, California-based Google opened its auction on Friday morning at 9 am (1300 GMT) as expected even though hours earlier it filed an amended regulatory document saying a Playboy magazine interview with its founders may have violated US securities rules.

Late on Friday afternoon, a source familiar with the matter said the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would not delay the deal because of the interview.

The IPO was not delayed because factual differences between the magazine article and Google's current business were corrected in the amended regulatory document, and a copy of the interview was inserted into the regulatory document before the auction began, the source said.

Google said in the amended document it believes it did not violate securities rules governing the 'quiet period' when its co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page gave an interview before the company filed a preliminary prospectus with the SEC on April 29.

The company also included in the amended filing three updates or corrections to information in the Playboy article. For instance, Google said the article indicates it has about 1,000 employees, but it currently has roughly 2,292 employees. It also clarified information on the storage space of its Gmail service, and the number of people who use its search engine every day.

Companies typically avoid media interviews ahead of their IPOs to avoid running afoul of securities requirements designed to keep a company from hyping its stock.

Earlier this year, Salesforce.com Inc was forced to delay its IPO after the company and its chief executive Marc Benioff were featured in a New York Times article.

Google declined to comment beyond its IPO Web site, http://www.ipo.google.com, and SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment.

Some investors remained unfazed by the amended filing, even before the regulatory issue was resolved.

'I read the Playboy interview, and there was nothing in there that made me think their business model was any different than I thought it was,' said Barry Randall, a US technology fund manager at US Bancorp Asset Management, who said he still intended to bid on the offering.

The possible violation of 'quiet rules' was the latest twist for the closely watched IPO, sparking a new round of questions as to how its unusual bidding process for shares would fare.

Google has filed to sell 25.7 million shares at an estimated price range of $108 to $135 per share in a modified Dutch auction.

Google has not said when the auction would end, only that it would announce the price of the IPO next week.

Google's auction is taking place in an environment in which a slew of IPOs have been postponed or withdrawn, hurt by slack investor demand and a declining equity market.

A number of recent deals have priced below estimates, leaving investors wondering if Google will as well.

Google is now taking bids from investors, who need to state how many shares they want to buy and at what price.

It is using a modified version of a Dutch auction to sell its shares. In a typical Dutch auction, the offering is launched at the highest price at which all of the shares offered can be sold to potential investors. But Google has left itself some wiggle room, saying it could price the IPO lower in order to get a wider distribution of its shares.