Will Google mean googols? Google is the stunningly popular Internet search-engine that recently announced plans to sell shares to the public.

Googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Investors are hoping to make googols of bucks on Google shares.

I’m not saying they won’t. But any wannabe Internet millionaire should keep in mind a list of hazards, some typical of any hot stock, some unique to this one. A date for the public offering has not been set but is expected to be in late summer or early fall.

The first hazard involves what pros call “efficient markets theory.” It says that at any given moment, a stock’s price reflects all the information that’s publicly available about the company.

Since Google is well-known, there’s not much chance you’ll happen upon a piece of information or a deeper insight that everyone else has missed.

If everyone believes this is a great company, the stock price will reflect that when the shares are initially sold, and subsequent price gains may not be anything special. Indeed, the stock could fall on the opening day.

Of course, there is the chance enthusiastic investors will push the stock price to higher-than-justified levels. Hopefully, you’d be smart enough to cash in your profits before other investors realize their mistake and the price falls.

This is what happened during the Internet bubble of the late ’90s. When prices sank to more sensible levels, lots of investors who’d bought at the top lost their shirts, since it’s next to impossible to know when the peak has been reached.

Using different approach

Google will sell shares directly to the public through an auction, rather than using investment banks that typically earmark shares for favored customers.

The auction is a good system — especially from Google’s point of view. Investment bankers often price shares too low, which is why the favored customers who get the first shares sold enjoy quick gains.

Google’s auction likely will establish a higher price — giving the company more money — than investment bankers would, since investors will bid the price to levels justified by supply and demand. Unfortunately for investors, the big opening-day gains we associate with initial public offerings may not occur in this case.

Another hazard: The success of Google’s Web-searching technology depends on a secret computer program that generates a list of the most popular Internet sites matching the user’s query.

But someone else could come up with a better system, rent a bunch of computer servers and get into business fast. Google users could switch to the competitor with just a few keystrokes. There’s not much customer loyalty on the Internet.

On the plus side, Google is an established, profitable company — unlike many of the Internet flashes-in-the-pan that went public a few years ago. It earned $105.6 million last year on revenue of $961.8 million, mostly from advertising.

Still, it’s not been around all that long — just since 1998.

Founders play key role

And a bet on Google is largely a bet on its founders, 31-year-old Larry Page and 30-year-old Sergey Brin. They are whiz kids, no doubt about it. Don’t we all wish we’d signed on with Bill Gates when he was a young whiz kid founding Microsoft?

But we can’t be sure Page and Brin have the stuff to manage a major corporation for the long run, or that they’ll have the new technological insights Google will need to keep ahead of the pack.

Even if they have the right stuff, what will happen to Google if one is killed on his skateboard? There’s a special risk whenever a company’s fortunes are tied to one or two individuals.

What if Page and Brin lose their touch? Hopefully, they’ll bring in some new magician. But if they decide to keep running things themselves, it will be next to impossible for shareholders to do anything about it.

That’s because the two founders will be the biggest shareholders, with 32 percent. And they alone will have a class of superstock that will assure them control of the company — with 10 votes per share instead of one.

Almost all shareholders-rights groups are critical of such dual-stock arrangements, since they violate the one-share, one-vote principle.

These setups can be especially bad when the supershares are passed on to the founders’ descendants, putting power in the hands of people who don’t have the founders’ talents.

I’m not saying don’t buy Google. It could turn out to be a great stock. But it’s a gamble, so I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

If you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of the Google auction, go to the Web site www.google-ipo.com, for instructions on bidding. If you want to know “everything,” click on the S-1 registration statement.