Could Google's Stock Fall To A Big, Fat Zero?

I've never heard of James Altucher before. He's an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur, and, as well, the Managing Director of Formula Capital and is the author of 6 books on investing, with the latest being, I Was Blind But Now I See and FAQ ME.

James Altucher has also caused a bit of a controversy for asserting that Google's stock may be heading to a big, fat zero! He outlines his reasoning in an article he wrote for Techcrunch entitled: Why Google Might Be Going to $0.

Apparently this claim is all based on patents, and in this case some pretty old ones going all the way back to the beginning days of search and a company called Lycos. Apparently, Lycos, a company that I once thought was a completely dead search engine, is still apparently still alive and kicking, and it had some original patents that were sold, and resold many times, and are now in the hands of a company called Vringo, who's stock has recently doubled on the prospect that Google is in violation of those patents, and thus it's owed a very great deal of moo-lah indeed.

According to this report, by the Wall Street Cheat Sheet, at one time Google used to be one of Lycos's biggest customers, and since Vringo's patents are believed to be ones that could effect Google's AdSense and AdWords, from which it derives some 97% of its revenues, if found guilty Vringo could demand a huge, no, let's make that a monstrous amount of money.

In conclusion, I really don't know that much about the this particular case or its claims, but if found guilty I would think that Google is in a very deep pile of you-know-what? As Mr. Altucher says in his article, you can decide for yourself by checking out how Google does its search thing here, and how Vringo's patent claim supposedly does its thing here, and as he also states: ".... it looks like the exact same to me."

And that's my 2 cents 4 this Thursday, April 12, 2012

Google image via: TechChrunch

PS. Barron's reports that Mr. Altucher's Techcrunch's article has helped boost Vringo's stock by some 86%!