For fun, my MSN Direct watch
is set to show the stock prices of all the major search engines. It only works
in the US, and I wish I were there now to capture a screen from it showing
Google having
broken the $500 per share mark. AP has a longer story on it
here. It’s around $503 when I
looked just now.
No doubt Safa Rashtchy at Piper Jaffray is keeping his fingers crossed (along
with thousands of Googlers) that it will keep going. Earlier this year, Safa
predicted a $600
price point by the end of 2006.
That’s still much to go but far closer than the $2,000 that analyst Mark
Stahlman
predicted a few days later However, I don’t believe Stahlman gave a time
when that would happen.
Given that Google’s cofounders are big fans of
Berkshire Hathaway — which I
believe has never split its stock — it’s possible that inflation alone could
help Google get into that range, assuming they also avoid splits. Berkshire’s
class B stock is at
$3,588, currently.