
GWEI: Plot to make Google eat itself - shii
http://gwei.org/index.php
======
wheels
What I found surprising about that is that they apparently already own about
half a million dollars worth of Google stock. I was expecting something far
more toyish.

~~~
gst
This site is quite old and is actually an art-project started in 2004 or 2005
(just Google for 'ubermorgen' in combination with 'google will eat itself').
At this time the price of the shares was much lower.

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pedrocr
This is funny but it shouldn't really be possible for it to actually work.
Every time they get a payout Google has almost certainly profited more from
the same activity, assuming their margin on ads is higher than what they pay
out to adsense users. So every time they make money they add more than that to
the total value of Google, ensuring they could never buy 100% of it.

~~~
sylvinus
Well the revenue share from AdSense was revealed to be in the 65% range. So
given a poor profitability by Google in the next few million years, it could
still work.

~~~
pedrocr
According to this:

[http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/adsense-revenue-
share.ht...](http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/adsense-revenue-share.html)

it's 68%. Wow, I wasn't expecting google to pay out quite so much.

At those percentages it actually becomes possible. Depending on how profitable
the sites and Google are at serving the content and the ads (respectively) it
could work.

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mrspeaker
The news page was last updated in 2007... Is that because the system is just
plodding along running itself, or because this experiment was all over and
done 4 years ago?

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yaix
They write about their own methods:

"Now we have set up [...] Adsense-Accounts [...]. Each time someone visits a
Web-Sites within our network of sites, he/she triggers a series of robots. For
each click we receive a micropaiment from Google."

Robots? For clicks? That would mean, that they are stealing money from AdWords
advertisers.

Did I overlook something?

~~~
Joakal
Looks like a quick way for Google to make a share buyback this way for nothing
after legal action costs.

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braindead_in
Are all Google's share's on the market? I think the IPO was only for a part of
the company, right?

~~~
dspeyer
Indeed. Most of the stock is held by the founders and not currently for sale.

~~~
losvedir
In addition, the type of shares on the market have less voting power than what
Larry, Sergey, and Eric have. From their most recent yearly report (10-K)[1]:

"Our Class B common stock has 10 votes per share and our Class A common stock
has one vote per share. As of January 31, 2011, Larry, Sergey, and Eric owned
approximately 91% of our outstanding Class B common stock, representing
approximately 67% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. Larry,
Sergey, and Eric therefore have significant influence over management and
affairs and over all matters requiring stockholder approval, including the
election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger
or other sale of our company or our assets, for the foreseeable future."

So while this "Google Eats Itself" thing may accumulate a fair amount of
Google shares and be worth a lot, it won't really give them any power over the
company.

[1]
[http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125110...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312511032930/d10k.htm)

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yangez
It is surprising and somewhat ironic to me that these guys have a pagerank of
5. I mean, for this to work they'd require legitimate websites that generate
significant ad revenue, that they could afford to keep pouring in Google stock
(instead of, say, buying a Maserati).

A WHOIS shows the owner as a guy called Hans Bernhard at ubermorgen.com.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen>

Apparently gwei is supposed to be "conceptual art" project, which explains why
so many legitimate sites link to it. If you look around it's been mentioned in
Daring Fireball and other legitimate sites as an interesting "conceptual
hack". Probably it's Hans Bernhard's other projects that serve as the "hidden
Web-Sites" that power gwei.

Either that, or the five hundred Gs is just a number fabricated by a webmaster
who insists on using obnoxious flashing backgrounds.

Either way, I doubt gwei was supposed to be a project seriously bent on taking
over Google. It's just modern art!

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narad
OMG. blinking background! Irritating.

If you want to read those content, disable the stylesheets using "Web
Developer Tool".

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punnie
according to their own calculations
[<http://gwei.org/pages/google/googleshare.php>]: 202.345.117 Years until GWEI
fully owns Google.

looks promising.

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eli
Sounds like a hoax to me.

If not, it's pretty mean to the advertisers (and possibly criminal).

~~~
yaix
Why does this get downvoted?

GWEI write on their web site that they are using "robots" for "clicks". If
that is the case, it would be criminal, since they would be stealing money
from AdWords advertisers.

I don't think its true though, because those kind of accounts usually get
banned quickly and the advertisers get their money back.

