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November 24, 2006
Google's shares like Picasso's checks?
Google's stock price recently crossed $500, making it Silicon Valley's second most valuable company after Cisco. Although 500 is just another number, boom times are evidently back. A while back, I had read about how Pablo Picasso used to prefer paying by personal check. Here's why:I wonder if Larry Page and Sergey Brin have started paying for their purchases directly with Google shares. I mean, you can get a PS3 or two Wiis with the going rate of one GOOG share. With a round lot of shares, they could buy a Hummer SUV if only they weren't so environmentally conscious.Pablo Picasso loved paying for things by check. Why wouldn't he? Many times the recipients of the checks, complete with his famous scrawly autograph, would keep the checks as souvenirs rather than cash them, giving the famous artist pretty good odds that he'd be getting things for free...So prized was Picasso's signature that it is said that when he paid for things by personal check, the odds were that the recipient of the check would save it rather than cash it. Seeing as a simple Picasso autograph can easily fetch $1,000 today, perhaps this wasn't such an irrational decision.
With the way the stock market is going, and with Google's philosophy of encouraging long term ownership of their stock, whoever was selling them stuff would probably just hold on to their payment-in-stock for future gains.
Posted by Vishy at November 24, 2006 05:00 PM