Google's Stock Soars Above $600 A Share

Google's stock price jumped to more than $600 on Monday, reaching heights equaled by only a small handful of elite high fliers in the market like Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway.

The company, which has seen its stock price more than quintuple since its initial public offering of $85, now has a market capitalization of $187 billion, trailing only Microsoft and Cisco Systems in the tech business. That number, by the way, is larger than those of Pfizer, Wal-Mart, and JP Morgan Chase.

Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck wrote last week that Google would trade at $700 by the end of 2008. The biggest bull of them all may be dot-com boom and bust figure and former analyst Henry Blodget, who recently wrote Google could eventually see $2,000 a share. Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy had put a target price on Google at $600 at the beginning of 2006, when the stock was hovering in the low-to-mid $400's.

Some observers with less bullish outlooks have pegged Google's forceful upward march as one indication of another Internet bubble. The company also could still face more anti-trust scrutiny in its acquisition of ad company DoubleClick, and has been getting criticized more often about privacy in recent months as the company has introduced new services like Google Street View.

Recently, the stock began dipping in mid-July on weaker-than-expected earnings and bottomed out at $491.52, but an uptick beginning in mid-August continues with the news today. Shares are already up 30% in the last year alone.

Earlier today, Google announced a partnership with IBM and several universities to teach students new programming methods that will keep pace with the Internet era and massively parallel processing power. The most recent market share numbers for search from ComScore, meanwhile, showed Google's search share increasing from 55.2% in July to 56.5% the next month, while Yahoo and Microsoft both posted losses.