[grimlck]

"Google worked out a deal with “full service” broker to give us free accounts"

That is actually really interesting. How much did this broker have to pay to get this box full of highly lucrative leads - access to a large set of newly wealthy individuals, many of which don't have experience with managing large amounts of money. A bunch of people who may be experts of technology, but probably are not experts on finance.

It seems like inviting the fox into the hen house, and telling the hens what it deal it was

[j_lev]

It also seems at odds with what was said in this article, linked to here on HN a couple of weeks back:

http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/the-best-inv...

[Matt_Cutts]

Just to answer this thread:

Google did a fantastic job of educating employees before the IPO. They brought in a ton of smart people to bring us up to speed, emphasize the need to diversify and minimize risk, etc. Honestly, I couldn't ask for a company to do a better job of educating us.

In addition, they arranged to give us default accounts with a broker so that we could sell our shares. My decision to park some money in commercial paper was strictly my own, and I should have done more research on it first.