I am highly impressed with the business wisdom of Google's current owners in how they are structuring the IPO of their company. The technical aspect of the open auction itself is intriguing as well.

The founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin are borrowing many concepts from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, including a strong emphasis on long-term financial performance, writing an annual letter each year, refusing to manipulate earnings, a belief that shareholders == owners, and creating a dual-class ownership structure which gives the founders and early investors greater voting rights.

The Financial Times article Auction decision puts onus on Individual Investor provides a decent summary:

At a valuation of $30bn, this would value Google at about 100 times possible 2004 earnings. This is not entirely out of line with eBay and Yahoo!, which trade respectively at 70 times and 89 times this year's forecast earnings. Yet, there are negative factors to consider.

Google's decision to adopt an unusual dual share structure - designed to give the company's founders control over long-term strategy - also needs to be taken into account. Source.

The Full Text of the Letter from Google's Founders is a must-read. This is a document that is likely to become required business school reading in the near-future:

Our intense and enduring interest was to objectively help people find information efficiently. We also believed that searching and organizing all the world?s information was an unusually important task that should be carried out by a company that is trustworthy and interested in the public good. We believe a well functioning society should have abundant, free and unbiased access to high quality information. Google therefore has a responsibility to the world. The dual-class structure helps ensure that this responsibility is met. We believe that fulfilling this responsibility will deliver increased value to our shareholders. Source.