Goolge in 2006?

Time will tell...

Google was up $6/share today. Is it true, Google will now be going into the video business?

Maybe a google search will produce the answer...

Sturgis, you kill me......

I would look for Google's stock to split before it hit $600 - just a thought, but that makes sense to me if Google wishes to derive revenue through the sale of stock; don't wanna price yourself outta the market. As it is, only the real big boys, or the way-early buyers, have Google in their portfolios.

Based on yesterday's and today's results, I think Google will hit a high of $750 this year and $1000 next year, before there's a stock split.

By the way, even though Google is expensive, you can still buy 1-5 shares, if you're not a rich person. I'd go for it, if I were you. Even 10 is a good amount to start with.

I read somewhere that the Google Boys don't plan to split the stock but take off after Berkshire Hathaway.

Yikes!

My curiosity got the best of me so I tracked the article down. A bit long but lots of info. Too bad I didn't load up on GOOG at $287.90.



June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. may follow the precedent of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s chairman, Warren Buffett, and avoid splitting its shares even though the stock price is among the 10 highest in U.S. markets.

Shares of the most-used Internet search engine went public in August and closed yesterday at $287.90, more than triple the initial price. The stock has risen 26 percent since May 12, when Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin said the company had no plans for a split.

The opposition contrasts with the approach taken by Internet companies such as EBay Inc., which split within six months after its initial public offering. The refusal may cause the size of trades in Google's shares to drop, making them more difficult to buy and sell.

``They'll resist splitting,'' said Alex Motola, who helps manage $13.5 billion at Thornburg Investment Management in Santa Fe, New Mexico, including 17,000 shares of Google. ``Given their interest in Warren Buffett and how he's run his company, there's no indication now they'll do it.''

Brin and Larry Page, the Mountain View, California-based company's other co-founder, mentioned Buffett as an inspiration before the IPO last August. Berkshire has never split its stock since the billionaire took control 40 years ago.

Berkshire's Class A shares closed yesterday at $84,125, the highest price for any stock listed on the New York or American stock exchange or the Nasdaq Stock Market. Google's price was the ninth highest.

Citing Buffett

Buffett said in a letter to shareholders in 1983 that to reduce price fluctuations, Berkshire wouldn't split its stock. Investors should be ``focused on business results, not market prices,'' he wrote. The company introduced Class B shares in 1996 that amounted to 1/30th of Class A's value.

Brin and Page echoed the message in a letter to investors in April 2004. ``We are creating a corporate structure that is designed for stability over long time horizons,'' they wrote. At Google's annual stockholders meeting on May 12, held at company headquarters, Schmidt and Brin were more direct.

``We have discussed this question and we have decided not to do it at this time,'' Schmidt said. ``That's probably all I should say.''

Brin added: ``As much as some people mentioned that it appears unattractive to investors, it appears it benefits us marketing-wise for our end-consumers to see the financial success of the company by virtue of a higher stock price.'' Google won't rule out a split in the future, he said.

Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman, declined to comment for this story.

Earnings Boost

Two analysts raised 12-month share price estimates on Google this week. Heath Terry of Credit Suisse First Boston increased his estimate to $350 from $275 and Piper Jaffray & Co.'s Safa Rashtchy boosted his forecast to $300 from $275.

Both cited the prospect of increased profit from expansion beyond search-based advertising. Google last month unveiled a free product to search for files and e-mails on business computers, and started offering satellite maps and movie times.

Analysts have underestimated Google's earnings for each of its three quarters as a public company. On April 21, the company said first-quarter net income surged almost sixfold to $369.2 million, surpassing the highest estimates.

``Anybody who valued this stock based on earnings expectations six months ago has had to rejigger things,'' said William McVail, a fund manger at Turner Investment Partners. The firm, based in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, oversees $15.2 billion and owned 588,000 Google shares as of March 31.

Higher Than Peers

Google's shares, sold initially at $85, are already above the price at which Internet companies such as EBay, Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. decided on their first stock splits.

``They're walking down a path that challenges conventional wisdom,'' said David Edwards, an analyst at American Technology Research in San Francisco. He doesn't own shares of Google and his firm doesn't do banking business with the company.

EBay, the world's largest Internet auctioneer, announced a split four months after the company's IPO in September 1998. The decision followed a 12-fold surge that sent the stock price to more than $220. The split was effective two months later.

Amazon.com Inc., the biggest Internet retailer, decided on its first split less than a year after going public. The stock price climbed more than fivefold, peaking at $100, before the company's board agreed to the split in April 1998.

Yahoo announced in July 1997, or 16 months after the IPO. Shares of the most-visited Internet site reached $51.25 before the decision was made.

Right Call

Prices such as Google's make it more difficult for individual, or retail, investors to buy and sell stock, according to David Ikenberry, a finance professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign.

``It's clear that higher sales price equates with higher institutional ownership,'' Ikenberry said in an interview. ``At a certain level, the retail market gets priced out.''

Google's average trade size has fallen as the price has climbed. Trades averaged 196 shares on June 1, when the stock closed at $288, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Two months earlier, as the stock changed hands for about $180, trades amounted to 253 shares on average.

Shareholders such as Stephen Burlingame, who helps manage $25 billion at TCW Group Inc. in Los Angeles, said the company is making the right decision by avoiding a split.

``Not splitting the stock typically encourages investors on some level to take a longer-term view and deters trading that might be facilitated by the ability to get pieces of the company with smaller chunks of money,'' Burlingame said.

What effect will the latest Government action have on Google?

a giant decline in internet inactivity would kill google and a host of other .dot.com companies triggering a host of other problems