It's worth noting that, in theory, an individual desiring a better return than the 3% the money market is giving them on Google's cash holdings can buy riskier

It's worth noting that, in theory, an individual desiring a better return than the 3% the money market is giving them on Google's cash holdings can buy riskier things on margin secured by their Google stock. Google stock price should be safer because the cash on hand will provide a lower bound on the value of the company and so a large margin account is feasible. In fact, if you borrow exactly the amount that Google would have paid and invest it you can synthesize whatever cash holdings level you think Google should have based on your risk preferences and the rest of your portfolio. This is roughly an application of the Modigliani Miller capital structure irrelevance theorem for the further interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani-Miller_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani-Miller_theorem