I don't think that any Google employee is going to reply to your comment with advice. "As a Google employee, I say invest!" is not going to get you on the good side of the lawyercats.

What I think is interesting about Google is how much voting power the founders retain. Things like a campus of solar panels, space elevators, and self driving cars (not to mention Chrome and Android) make a lot more sense when you realize it's not "the shareholders" that want those, it's the founders that want those. Google is a company where two successful guys and several thousand of their closest friends (we like to think) can do whatever they want. Is that a good investment? I'll let you decide.

(Disclaimer: Google employee. And if anyone takes that quote at the top out of context... well, let's just say laywercat suggests that I don't put it in writing.)

"is not going to get you on the good side of the lawyercats."

I don't know of anything in particular that would prevent an employee of a company from posting a comment here or in a blog reply anywhere simply saying they thought it was a good idea to buy the stock that would warrant any action.

But lets say (since I don't have time to fully research this I'm basing my answer on many years in business and dealing with the Federal Government, lawyers etc.) that there is some law that makes this "illegal". The chance of the federal government, SEC or anybody caring about a comment like this is nil.

As an employee, it's not the federal government you'd worry about. It's your own company's lawyers, etc. You're much more likely to get in trouble internally for violating the company's policies about making statements related to the stock valuation than any outside entity.

Employees at Google (and many other tech companies) are often privy to what would be considered "inside information" about the company's future plans and performance. Making statements about the stock price's relative valuation can be seen as a form of making tips based on that material non-public information. It's not a good idea to go around making statements (positive or negative) about the current valuation.

"You're much more likely to get in trouble internally for violating the company's policies"

So is there a specific policy in writing regarding what you can and can't say? The issue certainly isn't revealing non-public information of a specific nature which is fairly obvious to keep under wraps.

I believe what matters is the amount of specificity. For example you can't say "Our earnings will be up this quarter so buy the stock". But you could say "I think we are doing well so I am buying the stock". Salesman, selling a product for a company, say, airplanes for Boeing are definitely able to make general sales like statements that could or could not be interpreted as a stock buying signal.

It's hard to make any kind of statement about the value of a stock without making an implied statement about future performance, given that most of the value is based on expected future outcomes.

Generally, the employee handbook of any public company will explicitly forbid employees from making statements that connect to either future performance or other major non-public info such as products or hiring. (If for no other reason than to protect the company itself from accusations that it's letting its people "pump" it's stock.)

> let's just say laywercat suggests that I don't put it in writing.

LaYWercats are actually werecats (->lycanthropy) who also happen to be laymen. They give terrible legal advice which is unfortunate as they are often confused with lawyercats.

"Additionally, consumer's bar for tapping an ad is MUCH higher (given the relative speeds of mobile browsing). As searching moves mobile, how does Google's revenue shake out?" combined with "If you look forward 5+ years, everyone is doing much of their internetting via their phone "

This makes no sense. Do you truly believe that in 5 years mobile phones browsing speeds won't be much more comparable to desktops? LTE phones already have faster connections than many people's broadband.

Thinking about Google's ad revenue in 5 years time, based on the idea that people's only encounters with internet connected devices will be their phones and PC's is a horribly myopic view of future tech trends. In 5 years time, there will be cars sold with Heads Up Displays featuring Google Navigation. Facebook will certainly be integrated in here too, but at the moment I don't see Facebook preparing themselves for this.

"If you look forward 5+ years, everyone is doing much of their internetting via their phone"

Sure, but a nontrivial portion of that internetting will be with your phone in either a laptop or desktop dock station. Laptops and desktops are dying... laptop and desktop form-factor interaction with computer isn't.

One of the larger of the several reasons I'm grumpy about the way that cell phones has evolved with all their heavy vendor lockdown is that I should be able to use a cell phone as a full netbook with only a bit of effort. It's a f'ing computer, stop pretending it's not, let me in! Instead, hacky half-assed bullshit is barely in hardware beta from a select group of off-brand manufacturers, even as "a Linux desktop" is a solved problem. If I didn't have to invest in both a laptop and a cell phone I could justify a much nicer cell phone to myself.

"If you look forward 5+ years, everyone is doing much of their internetting via their phone"

Not true. People spend a significant amount of time in front of a computer "at work". Those people are still going to be sitting in front of a "desktop" in 5 years and still have the same behavior. There will be more mobile, but there will always (especially in only 5 years) be people "at the office" doing their job looking for information.

Desktops won't last forever in offices. Offices tend to move slow, but tablets and the like will move in slowly but surely.

It'd better damned well be a tablet with a full keyboard, a TrackPoint, three mouse buttons (at least), and support a minimum of dual-head display at 1920x1440 x2.

Yes, it's nice to be able to drag my computing environment around.

It's also damned useful to be able to park it, and get some serious shit done.

> If you look forward 5+ years, everyone is doing much of their internetting via their phone

A lot more time is being spent on mobile, but it isn't at the cost of desktop computing. Rather, the entire pie of how much time is spent online and how many people are online is growing as a whole.

This is why the online ad market is going ganbusters with growth (see my comment above) at the cost of the traditional ad markets (print, radio, etc.)