Google owners get richer and richer

SINCE GOOGLE went public, its owners and top executives have become richer and richer, in fact the company's shareholders have actually earned more in exercising stock options than Google has made in profit.

They raked in $5.5 billion by unloading stock during the past 12 months, while the company itself produced $1.47 billion net income during the entire year of 2005.

Eric Schmidt, CEO, racked up $670.3 million by selling around 2.1 million shares during the past 18 months. Other co-founders include Larry Page, who has cashed in about 6.8 million shares during the past 18 months for a total of $2.1 billion, and Sergey Brin who has sold about 6.4 million shares during the same period, for $2 billion.

Despite the shedding of shares by these Google executives, most analysts still rate the stock a buy, even at its current heady heights of $424.56 per share. Since the IPO, Google's shares have risen fivefold.

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