Free Republic

It looked like Google’s stockmarket flotation might be derailed at the last minute by an interview in Playboy magazine that seemed to contravene listing rules. However, the Securities and Exchange Commission has reportedly given it the go-ahead, and the search-engine company could be valued at as much as $36 billion when its shares start trading later this week. Is it worth anything like that? GOOGLE’S founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have always had an air of niceness about them: after all, Google was the first company to promise “not to be evil” in the prospectus for its initial public...