By Mike Langberg
Knight Ridder News Service

It's easy during good times to disdain mere profitability in favor of changing the world. The real test comes when things go bad — a test Google has not yet taken.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a fiercely loyal Google user, who respects both the company and the management philosophy of its leaders.

But I couldn't help getting nervous as I read the document Google submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission outlining its IPO plans.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Internet search company's youthful founders, are setting themselves up with a separate class of stock that essentially gives them veto power over the company's future.

Some twentysomething entrepreneurs mature into experienced leaders capable of running huge multinational companies, Bill Gates of Microsoft being the most obvious example. Some can't handle the heightened responsibilities, as with Steve Jobs when he was fired by Apple in 1985.

Into which group will Brin, 30, and Page, 31, ultimately fall? Too soon to say. Meanwhile, the pair have big ideas.

"Sergey and I founded Google because we believed we could provide a great service to the world — instantly delivering relevant information on any topic," Page writes. "Serving our end users is at the heart of what we do and remains our number one priority.

"Our goal is to develop services that improve the lives of as many people as possible — to do things that matter."

A noble sentiment, and one that I applaud from a company with a healthy 16 percent profit margin in the first quarter of 2004.

Just remember, before you rush in your bid for Google stock, that increasing shareholder returns is no higher than priority No. 2 on Page and Brin's to-do list.

"By investing in Google, you are placing an unusual long-term bet on the team, especially Sergey and me, and on our innovative approach," Page continues, using italics to emphasize the importance of his statement. "We want Google to become an important and significant institution."

The public library is an institution. The U.S. Supreme Court is an institution.

Google is a business that will need to keep reporting big profits to sustain whatever share price is set in the public offering.

If Google's performance turns south, outside shareholders won't have any clout to force changes.

If there's ever an attractive takeover bid for the company — attractive to shareholders, that is — Page and Brin could say no just because they are too emotionally involved to give up control. It's a scenario that happens all the time.

Page notes that newspaper companies including the corporate parents of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have prospered with two classes of shareholders, where the founding families retain control. (Knight Ridder, parent of the San Jose Mercury News, does not have such a structure.)

This works because newspapers are a mature business that range from wildly profitable in good years to reasonably profitable in bad years. Tech companies don't enjoy such a cushion, as the recent dot-com meltdown dramatically illustrated.

Google is living inside its own bubble, and we've all learned the hard way that bubbles don't last forever.

Page gives a fascinating peek into this golden orb near the end of his introductory letter: "We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge, doctors and washing machines. We are careful to consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits. Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time."