Google IPO

Google's initial public offering in August 2004 was the moment a research project became a public colossus, and the chart of that day tells the story with almost cheeky precision. The offering raised 1.67 billion dollars and valued the company at 23 billion, one of the largest technology floats the world had seen, the culmination of the PageRank algorithm that Larry Page and Sergey Brin had built at Stanford six years earlier.

The Sun of the moment blazes in Leo, in its own domicile at full strength: the lion-king at the centre of the solar system whom everyone else must orbit, a moment of confidence, brand-building and spectacle. That Sun falls in the eleventh house, the house of tribe and network, so here is the born entrepreneur founding its own franchise, a company begging the whole world to become members of its club. The Moon rides in Libra, a beautiful Venusian Moon of harmony and fairness, and it sits in the first house with a Libra Ascendant reinforcing it: the mask this company shows the world is polished, symmetrical, likeable, the elegant clean interface people wanted at their party. A Leo heart wearing a Libran face, launched to be adored by the masses.