Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Wondering why your investment in Google Inc. has lost 18 percent of its value since the shares peaked at about $475 in January? Relentless stock sales by the Internet search company's executives might be to blame.

Since Feb. 14, 2005, the expiration date of the biggest and final restriction on insider sales following Google's initial public offering, managers have dumped a truckload of stock.

As of Aug. 9, they had sold almost 23 million shares. That means Google's top executives have offloaded about $7.4 billion of stock, equal to about a third of the company's starting market value when it sold shares at $85 each in the August 2004 IPO.

There would be nothing evil about the people who built Google into a $119 billion company parlaying their squarely gotten gains into McMansions, private jets, home cinemas, Aspen ski-lodges, or whatever else the financially well-endowed are conspicuously consuming. Diversification is divine; they deserve every cent.

Nevertheless, it is remarkable that not a single Google insider has bought a single share of the company in the 18 months since the IPO lock-ups expired, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the Washington Service, which tracks insider sales. Philip Remek at Guzman & Co. in Coral Gables, Florida, is still the only equity analyst with a ``sell'' rating on Google; you could argue that he's not such a lone wolf, given the behavior of the company's owners.

Google acknowledged telephone calls and e-mailed questions to its press office, though failed to provide comment in time for this article.

Billionaire Pair

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded the company, have led the exodus. Page's share sales have sucked about $2 billion out of the market, while Brin has pocketed a bit more than $1.9 billion.

Other Google insiders have also scaled back their investments in their employer. Omid Kordestani, the company's senior vice president of sales, has sold $1.1 billion of shares. Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer, and Google director Ram Shriram have each sold more than $650 million of stock.

David Drummond, development vice president; George Reyes, chief financial officer; and Jonathan Rosenberg, head of product management, have each raised more than $200 million through post- IPO share sales.

Americans used Google for 45 percent of the 6.4 billion Internet searches they conducted in June, according to Comscore Networks Inc., which tracks Web data. Second-placed Yahoo Inc. had just 29 percent of the market. Google's second-quarter profit more than doubled to $721 million, or $2.33 a share, as revenue climbed 77 percent to $2.46 billion. Google, though, says it won't massage earnings to meet analysts' estimates, making share- savaging swings from quarter to quarter more likely.

The Mild Bunch

There's little evidence that the two 30-something billionaires who invented Google are funding extravagant lifestyles that will drain their wealth. Brin and Page ranked 26th and 27th, respectively, in the 2006 list of the world's richest people, published by Forbes magazine.

If you combine their names with the word ``gossip'' and search the Internet using Google (what else?), you get a couple of lame stories about alleged membership in a Los Angeles club called Xenii, costing the pair $4,500 a month. Unless there's some special Google censorship filter running, Page and Brin don't seem to be painting the town red.

There was a brief blizzard of excitement in July when their planned refurbishment of a Boeing 767-200 jetliner prompted a flurry of lawsuits between Blue City Holdings LLC, the company that owned the plane, and interior designer Leslie Jennings, who was hired to do the makeover. Lurid insights into a mile-high nightclub seemed assured.

Tesla Boys

The seemingly exciting news that the Googlers were shelling out for a 150-seater corporate plane was undermined by its unmasking as a clunker with more than a decade of service for Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd. The best the Wall Street Journal could come up with was an argument between Page and Brin over bed sizes, and a request for hammocks hung from the ceiling of the plane.

The raciest splurge the Internet wizards have made with their money is an investment in San Carlos, California-based Tesla Motors Inc. Tesla is designing a $100,000 sports car powered by electric batteries with a claimed performance of zero to 60 miles per hour in 4 seconds and a 250-mile range between recharges.

The pace of Google share sales by the founders shows no signs of slowing. Page sold more than $1.2 billion of stock last year, while Brin shed about $1.15 billion, for a divestment rate of about $22 million a week. This year's sales of $762 million and $790 million equal about $24 million a week. Based on the number of shares Page and Brin said they owned in April filings, they each still have about $12 billion in Google stock at the current price of about $386 a share.

This year, Google shares are down about 7 percent. Gauging whether Page and Brin now have enough walking-around money to halt their stock sales might be a better guide to the stock's future performance than trying to forecast quarterly earnings, assess new products or predict the company's market share.

(Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Mark Gilbert in London at magilbert@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 17, 2006 19:05 EDT