Google, perhaps Silicon Valley's most famous and iconoclastic company, registered to go public yesterday, ending more than a year of intense speculation and signaling that it does not intend to sit idle in the face of strengthening competition.

The Internet search company hopes to raise about $2.7 billion in an initial public stock offering that will defy convention by auctioning shares directly to the public.

The timing of the sale has not been set.

Befitting the company's nonconformist reputation, Google's filing with the Securities Exchange Commission was accompanied by a unusual letter, from founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, that vowed to maintain the company's focus on innovation and "making the world a better place."

"Google is not a conventional company," Page wrote in the seven-page letter, inspired in part by investor Warren Buffett's essays in his annual reports. "Eric Schmidt, CEO, Sergey and I intend to operate Google differently, applying the values it has developed as a private company to its future as a public company."

The founders vowed not to give financial guidance to analysts, as is customary, and to resist pressures from Wall Street for strong earnings, quarter after quarter.

"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 said in the letter.

Page also said the company would contribute as much as 1 percent of its equity and profits to a foundation that it hoped would help tackle the "largest of the world's problems."

As expected, Google turned to Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston to manage its stock offering.

Google said the price of its IPO would determined through an auction that it hoped would give ordinary investors a better shot at buying its stock. Typically, IPO shares are distributed to a select group of people chosen by investment bankers.

Page and Brin apparently hope to shield themselves from outside pressure by crafting a two-class stock structure that will allow them to closely control the company. Google will sell Class A common stock to the public, but the founders will control Class B stock, with 10 times the voting power.

Taking a risk

Observers said Google's approach to being a public company may alienate some investors seeking a more traditional structure, but may also appeal to a broad base of individual investors who have felt alienated by a recent string of corporate scandals, including the Enron and WorldCom debacles.

"They're sending a subtle message that we want a different kind of shareholder," Roizen said. "The question is whether there are enough of them out there. ... It looks great. But only if it works."

The registration document filed with the SEC provided the first glimpse of the secretive company's financial performance, which was mostly in line with analyst expectations.

Google reported net revenues of $962 million last year, and profits of $105 million. Revenues have grown steadily every quarter between March 2002 and last month, when the company took in $389 million.

The vast majority of the company's revenues — 96 percent — came from advertising, most of that from the text ads that accompany search results on its main Web site. Total advertising revenues grew 122 percent between March 2003 and last month. Licensing of the Google search technology and other areas accounted for 4 percent of revenues.

Six-year-old Google outpaced Yahoo in terms of growth in user traffic, revenue and profitability last year. Its tripling of sales beat every company in the Standard & Poor's 500 index except one, Williams Cos. That growth is one reason investors are willing to place a value of as much as $20 billion on the company.

But both Yahoo and Microsoft are bulking up their search products, and analysts are predicting a bruising battle for users among the top three companies.

Become even stronger

The stock sale will significantly strengthen Google's already strong financial position. The company reported having $455 million in cash and equivalents at the end of March, and just $38 million in debt. By the end of the summer, Google could have more than $3 billion at its disposal, far more than Yahoo now has.

"I certainly hope that in three years we're not talking about 95 percent of revenues from search advertising," Mahaney said. "They'll have more capital, and they'll be able to expand into new applications and new markets."

Google's insistence that it intends to be a different public company and not bend to the will of investors and Wall Street was met with both applause and skepticism.

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Heidi Roizen said Google may try to downplay the importance of quarterly financial reports and refuse to give guidance to investors.

"But people will make estimates anyway and if your stock goes down and there are investor lawsuits ... I'm just not sure if you can get away with it," Roizen said. "In some ways I'm thrilled, because they're testing so many things."