About Transferable Stock Options at the Official Google Blog covers how Google is now allowing most of its employees to auction off their stock options to financial institutions through a bidding process. Previously, employees could either hold their options or sell them directly themselves. The idea is that the bidding process might help employees get a better price on their shares than if they sold directly, if particular institutions wanted to pay a premium. That’s especially helpful for employees with options to purchase shares at a price higher or near some of Google’s current record level prices.

Google sets up options market from the San Jose Mercury News explains more about how for some periods in 2006, stock options were worthless to some Googlers because the cost to exercise them was more than the current price. From the story:

For example, an employee with an option to buy Google at $500 a share might think the option was worthless on a day, like Tuesday, when the stock closed at $481.78.

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Related Topics: Google: Business Issues | Google: Employees

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan

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