Google Tops $600, Joining Berkshire

Google　Sergey Brin


Happy Birthday to Google company them are 9 years to day




　Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular Internet search engine, surpassed $600 in Nasdaq trading, joining Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. among the six stocks that crack that mark.

The stock advanced as high as $601.45 on the Nasdaq Stock Market today before retreating. The shares rose $4.91 to $598.96 at 11:17 a.m. Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who each owned about 9 percent of Google as of March 1, have seen the value of their holdings climb to more than $17 billion each since the company first sold shares to the public in 2004.

Google won users by being first to offer more images, maps and video in search results, gaining more than half of U.S. queries and leaving Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. struggling to catch up. Google plans to wrest more advertisers from rivals by targeting shoppers through mobile phones and video sites.

``It's got a long way to go over the next few years unless someone's going to compete like hell with them,'' said Jon Burnham, chief executive officer of Burnham Securities, which manages about $3 billion in New York and owns Google shares. ``I don't see that coming.''

The Web advertising market in the U.S. will climb 29 percent this year to $21.7 billion and then more than double by 2011, according to EMarketer Inc. Ads linked to search results will account for about 40 percent of that, the New York-based researcher estimates.

Google's Gains

Google upgraded its search engine in May by adding links to videos from the YouTube site, bought last year, and to images, book excerpts and news. Microsoft and Yahoo have followed in the past week with their own upgrades. Google also is counting on its $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick Inc., its largest, to gain sales in the display ad market. The deal still requires regulatory approval.

Google's U.S. share of the Internet search market increased to 56.5 percent in August from 55.2 percent the previous month, according to Reston, Virginia-based researcher ComScore Inc. Yahoo fell to 23.3 percent and Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft dropped to 11.3 percent from 12.3 percent.

Berkshire Hathaway had the two highest priced stocks in the U.S., with the Class A shares trading at $121,200 today. The others above $600 are Seaboard Corp., a pork processor and cargo shipper, CME Group Inc., operator of the world's biggest futures market, and Washington Post.

Google's Rewards

In its IPO, the largest ever for an Internet company, Google dodged U.S. investment banks and sold shares directly to investors. The so-called Dutch auction allowed smaller firms to bid for shares, giving the bigger ones less control over the sale.

Google's advance made billionaires out of Page and Brin, 34, who started the company as Stanford University graduate students in 1998. Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt owns over $5 billion in stock.

Sales growth has surpassed 70 percent each of the past three years, helping generate a stock market value of more than $180 billion. That's bigger than retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the third largest among U.S. technology companies, behind software maker Microsoft and Cisco Systems Inc., the biggest producer of computer networking equipment.

While 34 of 37 analysts tracked by Bloomberg recommend buying the shares, the price forecasts suggest more skepticism. Of the 28 analysts with estimates, 19 have predictions below $625 for the next 12 months. Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) --