• Cnet, Tuesday, November 29, 2005 11:15 AM

Fifteen months ago, Google asked for $85 per share in its bizarre Dutch-style initial public offering. Most people thought this asking price, lowered from what was once between $108 and $135 per share, was already sky high and could possibly end in embarrassment for the search company. Those people would be very, very wrong. On Monday, Google's stock price finished the day at $423.48 per share, Cnet reports, making it more valuable than Time Warner, Cisco Systems and eBay and Amazon.com combined. At $125 billion, Google is now in the sites of mammoth companies like Intel ($162 billion) and Microsoft ($295 billion). Yikes. How far will it go--how much higher can it possibly go? Says one analyst: "Take an '8' and turn it sideways. You get the sign of infinity." Err, that high. But not all financial analysts agree Google stock can be lauded to the skies until further notice. Google is trading at 46 times expected 2006 earnings, a very high price to earnings ratio which usually brings with it great risk. Other analysts say that as long as Google keeps innovating and moving forward, it will be able to maintain its high price for a while.

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