Google has detailed its second public share offering. This time, it's dispensed with the Hallmark Card sentiments that characterized its first trip to the stock market - see Google files Coca Cola jingle with SEC - and the relief from the button-down Wall Street Journal is palpable.

"Its second crack at the public markets seems as ordinary as any widget maker's," chortles the WSJ.

"Most of all, there is no pontificating in the prospectus this time - instead of intoning that Google 'has a responsibility to the world,' the most revolutionary statement being made is the company's assertion that advertising, which generates 99% of its revenue, 'should not be an annoying interruption' to users of its Web site," we learn.

Much of the cosmic piffle in the 2004 prospectus, such as the section titled 'MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE', was demoted by the time the IPO neared.

"I like this one better. I can read it... " comments one analyst, the task of filling in the thought bubble with "... without throwing up" left as an exercise for the reader.

Wall Street got nervous at Google's unconventional auction approach to its IPO, and the jitters got to Google itself, which repriced the stock down to $85 a share. But Google has had the last laugh so far, however, with the stock currently riding over $300 a share, valuing the ad giant larger than Time Warner Inc.

Google set a price of $295 per share for the Class B stock today raising $4bn. At these multiples, it would be daft not too. ®

Related stories

• Analyst cheers Google with $600 per share target (4 January 2006)
• Google tops $1.5bn in Q3 (21 October 2005)
• Google wants $4bn more (19 August 2005)
• SEC to examine Playboy for boobs (13 August 2004)
• Google demotes Coca Cola jingle (23 June 2004)
• Google files Coca Cola jingle with SEC (29 April 2004)