The Google Manifesto: Does its IPO letter to shareholders hold up 10 years later?

In 2004, Google Inc. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin issued a then-startling caveat with their IPO registration statement.

That document, 'An Owner's Manual for Google's Shareholders' was designed to inoculate the founders against shareholders who might press for short-term financial goals over long term strategy. 'A management team distracted by a series of short term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour,' they wrote at the time.

Since then, the company's share price has supported the argument that Page and Brin knew what they were talking about, at least from a financial perspective.

Read the full letter from Google's S-1 below.

INTRODUCTION

Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one. Throughout Google's evolution as a privately held company, we have managed Google differently. We have also emphasized an atmosphere of creativity and challenge, which has helped us provide unbiased, accurate and free access to information for those who rely on us around the world.

Now the time has come for the company to move to public ownership. This change will bring important benefits for our employees, for our present and future shareholders, for our customers, and most of all for Google users. But the standard structure of public ownership may jeopardize the independence and focused objectivity that have been most important in Google's past success and that we consider most fundamental for its future. Therefore, we have implemented a corporate structure that is designed to protect Google's ability to innovate and retain its most distinctive characteristics. We are confident that, in the long run, this will benefit Google and its shareholders, old and new. We want to clearly explain our plans and the reasoning and values behind them. We are delighted you are considering an investment in Google and are reading this letter.

Greg Baumann is editor in chief at the Silicon Valley Business Journal.