Founders' loose lips could delay Google's IPO ship

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google Inc.'s highly anticipated initial stock offering faced a possible stumbling block Thursday with the release of a Playboy interview the online search engine's co-founders gave just before the company filed plans to raise $3 billion with its IPO.

In the seven-page interview, Larry Page and Sergey Brin discuss the company's rapid growth and even brag about how Google's search engine has helped save people's lives.

The interview, contained in a Playboy issue delivered to some subscribers Thursday, threatens to delay Google's initial public offering because securities regulations restrict what executives can say while preparing to sell stock for the first time.

Google needs the Securities and Exchange Commission to approve its registration statement before it can complete the IPO. The process will be complicated by the Playboy interview, predicted Michael Zuppone, a former SEC attorney, who added that he thinks the interview will "cause regulatory concern."

The SEC sometimes imposes a "cooling off" period when a company involved in an IPO releases any information that deviates from its IPO registration statement.

Mountain View-based Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. A message left with the SEC was not immediately returned.

Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey said the magazine conducted the interview with Page and Brin on April 22 -- a week before Google filed its registration statement.

But Zuppone doubted the timing of the interview would matter to the SEC because Page and Brin knew an IPO filing was imminent at that time. Google also could have required Playboy to delay the interview's publication until the IPO was completed, Zuppone said.