Private property and the modern corporation in the third millennium: Google's SOS to the SEC

'Then felt I like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken' (John Keats). In 1932, Professors Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means published The Modern Corporation and Private Property. In that seminal work, the professors described the alienation of power over property by executives and corporate management from the putative owners of that property, i.e., the shareholders. Berle updated that theme in 1959 in his Power without Property. Back then, property was presumed to be essentially bricks and mortar or other tangibles. There were some intangibles, generally involving copyrights, patents or other identifiable contractual rights, e.g., leaseholds. But that notion of property has been transmuted in this third millennium, an era which I have dubbed that of the 'four I's' – the internet, intangibles, intellectual property and information.