Interesting that all of the examples provided, google, amazon, facebook, MSFT all apparently provide units of stock with a predictable initial value; with stock options, all you can do is guess whether the company will grow and by how much, but if the company didn't grow at all they would be worthless. In fact, are we sure facebook doesn't grant options? Seems like they are still in the growth phase to the point where they could offer options instead, whereas MSFT would have a hard time keeping a straight face offering options at this point.