Google launches £11bn float

GOOGLE has pressed the button on its long-awaited stock market flotation valuing the search engine at up to £11bn.

This makes it the largest technology share offering since the dotcom boom and one of the largest ever floats.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who founded the company in 1998, want to raise £1.5bn through flotation but will hang on to most of the voting rights by creating a second class of shares.

They will be worth around £3bn. Determined to avoid the scandal of previous dotcom flotations, they are selling shares through a public auction, slashing fees to investment banks.

'Google is not a conventional company,' they state in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Many of Google's 1,900 employees will become millionaires and celebrity backers, including Tiger Woods and Henry Kissinger, will also get windfalls. Google made £36m in the first quarter on sales of £219m.