The search engine company has gone from being an exercise in delivering relevant results for web queries to a global corporation with a market capitalization of $110 billion dollars.
To borrow a phrase from Monty Python, there was very likely much rejoicing at the Googleplex this afternoon. New York’s 4:00 market close is merely a 1:00 power lunch on the West Coast.
Shares of GOOG closed at $403.45 today, several sources reported. After hours trading has been just as optimistic, with shares touching $404.09 at press time. Google’s market cap now exceeds that of networking equipment maker Cisco.
Many analysts still don’t think Google has hit a ceiling yet. The Wall Street Journal noted that some have set a $450 share price target for Google.
It’s an astonishing rise for the seven year old company. What Google lacks in glitter it has made up for in functionality, which in tech circles carries more importance anyway. Making that functionality a trivial demand on the typical non-tech oriented user, with its straightforward search box and relevant results, was the real accomplishment.
Today, Google has been rewarded with a market value that exceeds web rivals like AOL’s Time Warner and Yahoo. Microsoft still remains far away though, its market cap around $300 billion and tons of cash on hand keeping it a distant goal that Google might aspire to reach.
Or, Google may be content to keep on building services, and maybe become a major network player along the way. Money is great to have, but for Google it might just be a means to accomplish its goal of indexing all the world’s information.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
