Google goes public; shares price at $85 in an auction Wall Street didn't design

For six years Google had run on venture capital and angel money, including an early check from Jeff Bezos. On August 19, 2004, it opened on the Nasdaq National Market under the ticker GOOGL, selling 19,605,052 shares at $85 apiece. The offering raised $1.67 billion and valued the company at more than $23 billion. Rather than let Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse set the price the usual way, Google ran the sale as a modified Dutch auction that let ordinary investors bid alongside institutions…