When Google went public in 2004, the company had a simple message for employees: Keep the sports cars at home.
Google's IPO created plenty of millionaires and even some billionaires, but founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin worried that it might also create a visible wealth disparity and shift employees' focus away from their work. "They were very clear they didn't want to see the fancy cars in the company parking lot," Lise Buyer, an analyst with Class V Group , who helped plan Google's IPO, told Mashable. "We were very worried about that at Google ahead of time. You need the organization to keep functioning."
