NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Bidding for shares in the initial public offering of Google started Friday after the company said it does not believe an interview its founders gave to Playboy magazine violates securities laws about IPOs.
And according to a report from Reuters late Friday, a person close to the situation said that the Securities and Exchange Commission would not delay the IPO because of the interview. That would clear the way for Google to announce the stock's offering price sometime next week.
Google, the No. 1 Internet search engine, said in an SEC filing earlier in the day it did not believe the article was a violation of the SEC's "quiet period" restrictions on IPOs, but added that if the interview was found to violate securities law, it could be forced to repurchase shares at the original purchase price for a year after the date of the violation.
It said it would "contest vigorously" any claim of a violation.
An SEC spokesman declined comment on Google's filing.
Nonetheless, the controversy is the latest dogging the online search engine's widely awaited IPO.
The company announced earlier this month that it may have illegally issued more than 23 million shares to current and former employees and also agreed to issue stock potentially worth about $300 million to archrival Yahoo! to settle a patent dispute between the companies.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has filed to sell 25.7 million shares at an estimated price range of $108 to $135 a share in an unusual "Dutch auction" meant to make the stock more widely available to average investors.
But many on Wall Street have questioned whether Google deserves to trade at such a lofty valuation. If Google prices at the mid-point of its preliminary range, it would have a market capitalization of nearly $33 billion.
Google finished registering potential IPO investors Thursday and started the auction Friday morning. (For more on whether Google's right for your portfolio, click here).
Companies typically avoid media interviews ahead of their IPOs to comply with securities requirements meant to keep officials from hyping stock ahead of the offering, though the interview was conducted before Google filed for its IPO on April 29.
Earlier this year, Salesforce.com Inc. was forced to delay its IPO after the company and CEO Marc Benioff were featured in a New York Times article.
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 CNNfn's Mary Snow takes a closer look at whether the Google Playboy interview violates securities laws.
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The September Playboy, which hit newsstands Friday, features an article based on an interview with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Google said in its filing that the article had misinformation about the company, and that potential investors should not consider it alone when deciding whether to buy shares.
The initial offering price, which may be announced next week, will be set at the highest point where all 25.7 million shares being offered can be sold, based on investor bids.
The article said Google's Gmail service, with one gigabyte of storage, has 200 times more storage than the company's primary competitors.
"While at the time of its introduction, Gmail had such a substantial storage capacity advantage over competitive offerings, competitors have substantially narrowed the gap," the company said in its filing.
The article also said that 65 million people worldwide use Google's search engine each day, while the company's filing said it believed that number represents monthly, not daily, domestic visitors to its site.
The article also said it had about 1,000 employees; Google currently has about 2,292 employees.
-- from staff and wire reports
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