Google shareholders are either fat and happy or they were drugged during the annual stockholder meeting that took place in Mountain View this afternoon.
As expected, Amnesty International made something of a nuisance of itself. Though they don't own any shares, they presented a shareholder proposal on behalf of the New York State Pension Funds that somehow involved China, privacy and censorship. (The details were sketchy.) And while the board urged shareholders to vote against the Amnesty-organized proposal, co-founder Sergey Brin was the only person to abstain. (He said he supported the spirit of the proposal but he didn't necessarily agree with how it was written.)
Other than that, hardly a critical word was uttered. One shareholder said the investor relations department rots. (He got some applause.) Another complained about how competitors' web sites came up higher in search results for certain trademarked search terms.
But other than that, most shareholders sounded like awe-struck kids: One shareholder sheepishly asked about "the wedding." Which one, both Sergey and Larry asked.
"We prefer to focus on the business in this meeting," Sergey Brin said.
"Whatever Sergey said," Larry Page said.
See Also:
- Ignored by Yahoo, Microsoft Pokes Facebook
- Google Hits It Out of the Ballpark: Q1 Profit up 30 Percent
- The ComScore-Google War Rages On
- How Google Has Screwed Up the MySpace Deal
- Doubts Spread About Google's Q1 Earnings
Photo: flickr/Jakob Lodwick
