One of the owners of Google Eric Schmidt, has filed with the SEC to sell 42% of his stake in the company for $2.5 billion.

“This is a routine diversification of assets and Eric remains completely committed to Google,” Niki Fenwick a spokeswoman for Google, said in an e-mail.

“A routine diversification of assets” is Wall Street jargon for jumping ship and dumping the stock. There is nothing very routine about $2,500,000,000 — two thousand five hundred million. Facebook is collapsing, their profits fell 95% this year from the hype-year when they were floated on the stock market. These Internet billionaires have the inside track on information they are connected very high up the food chain. Stuart Wilde. wwwstuartwilde.com

Google’s Schmidt Adopts Plan to Sell as Much as 42% of Shares

By Brian Womack – Bloomberg

Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt is adopting a plan to sell as many as 3.2 million shares in the operator of the world’s most popular search engine.

The planned share sales, worth about $2.5 billion, are for Schmidt’s individual asset diversification and liquidity, Mountain View, California-based Google said in a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The plan represents 42 percent of Schmidt’s share holdings. He had 7.6 million Class A and B shares as of Dec. 31, and has also adopted separate share sale plans for his investment companies.

“This is a routine diversification of assets and Eric remains completely committed to Google,” Niki Fenwick, a spokeswoman for Google, said in an e-mail.

Sales may take place over a maximum period of a year, the filing said. Google rose 1.5 percent to $785.37 at yesterday’s close in New York, leaving them up 11 percent this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net

Google Owner Dumps His Shares

Google’s Schmidt Adopts Plan to Sell as Much as 42% of Shares