Google stock zooms past $500 mark

SAN FRANCISCO: Google Inc.'s stock price exceeded $500 for the first time on 21st November.

Its shares rose $9.67, or nearly two per cent, to $504.72 in morning trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

That left Google with a market value of $154 billion just eight years after Stanford University graduates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, started the business in a Silicon Valley garage.

Google has come a long way since its initial public offering at $85 in August 2004. The shares touched $100 on its first day of trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, then crossed $200 in less than three months. Seven months later in June 2005, the stock hit $300 and then crossed $400 on November 17 last year.

Besides Page and Brin, Google’s success has created hundreds of millionaires as many investors want to own a piece of the company that has become the Internet's most powerful financial force despite the dotcom bust at the end of the millennium that put out several companies out of business.

Apart from its traditional revenue sources of ads and online content, the company is now looking at expanding its horizon into video, delivering messages to computing devices and also looking at avenues beyond the web.

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