Google went ahead with the start of its controversial stock auction as planned yesterday.

But the row over the founders’ interview with Playboy magazine refused to go away. The company was forced to take the unprecedented step of amending its prospectus to include a copy of the article — believed to be the first time a Playboy item has become part of the Securities and Exchange Commission record.

Google also had to clear up several errors made by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in the piece.more…

Google Inc. avoided a possible delay to its stock offering Friday by officially disclosing the contents of an interview its founders gave to Playboy magazine. The Mountain View Internet search firm incorporated the entire text of the controversial interview into a filing it made with securities regulators, clearing the way for the company to start its $3 billion IPO auction. Meanwhile, the 28 banks and brokerage firms that Google is using to conduct the auction began taking bids for the auction Friday morning. The filing satisfied objections that the Securities and Exchange Commission had raised about misleading statements in the story, according to published reports. “It’s unlikely the SEC would have given the go-ahead if they hadn’t made this disclosure,” said Bruce Deming, a securities attorney with the San Francisco law firm Farella Braun & Martel, which is not involved in the IPO. More