• by October 26, 2004

Google, which last week cleared its first earnings session as a public company, wakes up today to find that for the moment at least, its market cap exceeds Yahoo!'s. Yes, that's right. Shares of Google translate to $51 billion in market value, or about four times more than Yahoo! and, for that matter, Amazon.

On Monday, shares of Google hit $187.40, that's up 120 percent from its initial public offering price. Google went public in August.

A few weeks ago, I speculated that Google had grandiose ambitions. That beyond owning all facets of the search market, the company wants to be the kind of online network Yahoo! is, or MSN - a full-service portal with browsing capabilities. But there's a question mark. In an interview with the Financial Times on Monday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that the company has decided not to join the browser wars. This is an interesting development if you can believe it. "We are not building a browser," Schmidt told the FT.

Schmidt says Google will focus on enriching its search capabilities and technology, as Yahoo! and Microsoft continue to integrate their services with specific search features.