Google plans to raise Google’s choice to raise $2,718,281,828.
From Peter Kaminski’s blog:
It turns out that 2.718281828… (…and an infinite number of digits after that) is ‘e’, the base of the natural logarithm. Because it can’t be expressed as a ratio of two numbers, it’s known mathematically as “irrational” — something some bankers might say about the way Google is going public. However, ‘e’ also happens to be “transcendental,” another fancy property of a number that means it can’t be expressed by a finite number of algebraic operations. Maybe Google is making a little wordplay — saying they expect to transcend expectations — to overcome or notably exceed ordinary limits.
(Thanks, Ross)
Maybe they expect never to converge on the correct number.
It’s e-commerce, dammit!
Normally it would be me doing something like this, and everyone around me would be shaking their heads slowly. I’m so happy that nerds grew up to run the world.
If they needed close to 4 million they might have chosed PI instead! if they needed close to 1 million they could have chosen 1/root 2