﻿ Google stock opens at record high, hits $1,000 a share | ZDNet

Google stock opens at record high, hits $1,000 a share

Summary: The search giant (turned everything else) opened on Friday at an all time high. Shortly after the opening bell, it hit $1,000 a share.

(Image: ZDNet)

Google hit the $1,000 a share mark on Friday, less than a day after reporting strong fiscal third-quarter earnings.

The search turned cloud and mobile giant opened up 91 points, or 10 percent, on the New York Stock Exchange, when the opening bell struck at 9:30 am ET.

However, in spite of the nice rounded four-digit figure, it doesn't mean all too much for the company. Companies are valued (in a rough sense) by its market capitalization figure.

At the time of writing, Google's market cap stood at $334 billion. By comparison, even though Apple is currently trading at $508 a share, its market cap is significantly higher at $462 billion.

On Thursday, Google reported better-than-expected third-quarter results.

The internet giant reported a net income of $2.97 billion, or $6.53 a share. Despite the drop in advertising prices, Google's results were offset by a larger proportion of ad-clickers.

Over the past ten years, Google's stock has risen by almost ten-times from its initial public offering price of $100 a share.

Screen Shot 2013-10-18 at 10.16.00
$GOOG at 10 am ET on Friday (Image: Google Finance)

Topic: Google



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  • Not bad for what basically, is a one product company,

    which gets the vast majority of its earnings from its search engine.

    Android, if it could be turned into a moneymaker for Google, instead of for Microsoft, then Google stock might hit 1500 some time in the next couple of years.

    $2.97 in net earnings is pretty good, but not that impressive. Investors will put money into any stock which is making any kind of profit lately, since they can no longer keep money in the bank where it loses money instead of earning interest of 5% or more like in the "good old days" before the economy tanked.
  • Yes & No

    One product company yes but it's no longer a search engine company, it's all about the advertising. The search engine, along with android, is nothing but a conduit for more ad views. That's why android was never intended to be a subscription/licence based money maker, it's about feeding ads to consumers. It's the same reason virtually everything they do on the web is free to the end user, at least that's the general perception.
    Little Old Man
    • With Google, advertising is their one product, and the search engine is the

      conduit. Android just another conduit.

      However, Google has been trying to diversify from advertising, and most of their attempts have either failed or produced very little, and so, they were dropped or killed.

      There will come a time when Google's type of advertising will hit a wall, and advertising dollars will go flat and growth won't be forthcoming, no matter how many conduits Google dreams up.
      • @ adornoe

        There are two potential walls that Google can hit in the ad market. One is the legal trouble from antitrust authorities in the mobile and desktop ad markets due to current high marketshare and overdominant use of that marketshare to thrust into newer markets. Second is the rise of the another mobile app platform that can override Google's own mobile services.

        For now, the 2nd one is not a danger. Google mobile and now search services, enhanced campaign ad services, map services and lastly Google app/docs/gmail services are sufficiently integrated to guarantee that user data is monolithic when presented to advertisers. So Facebook, Twitter or any new Samsung or Apple or Microsoft services will not become good enough threats to disrupt this integration of services and the data synergies that it produces.
        But Facebook and Twitter are still the wild cards on iOS and Android platforms. Especially since Google Plus is increasingly becoming a notable social product failure.

        The 1st problem may be significant but not yet. There is not much of a chance that EU or Latin American or Asian antitrust authorities can really put brakes on older Google desktop or newer mobile platform or mobile search business practices. Enhanced campaigns is already out as a success in the most recent quarter and Android is already a mobile OS platform success. There is nothing that lawmakers can do to put brakes on Google. It is too late.

        The only factor that can hurt Google is the next technology round. Google's engineering staff and management staff are no longer in their 20s and 30s. They are getting older. The newer American younger generations may no longer prefer Google consumer services. And we will know this generational shift in 5 to 10 years from now when a Google product plain fails to get any market acceptance beyond single digit marketshare. Like how Microsoft consumer products are received now. Microsoft is old for younger people. And the same thing will happen to Google.

        I underestimated Google's success. They studied Microsoft well. And they went past the gates of antitrust pretty easy compared to how Microsoft was left with scars and beaten and bruised in its antitrust battles.

        Google is a business school case study on how well a technology company can successfully build dominant marketshare in one market and use it successfully to push themselves into another market without getting regulated through the entire process.

        IBM could not do it. GE could not do it. ATT could not do it. Microsoft could not do it. But Google did it. So Google is actually a bigger success than Microsoft. One has to give it to them and declare it that they are really well managed on their business strategy thinking.

        I also expect Google's stock price to hit $1500 now that mobile ad marketshare is beginning to yield volume growth and revenue growth. And the total number of Android phones is only increasing everyday. That number is not going to get saturated until 2016 or 2017. So Google will be a growth story until 2016 at a minimum. Which is really impressive for a mature company.

        The most recent quarter's results also show that Microsoft has been unable to push Bing services (search and ad) in a meaningful manner in the desktop search market to start to hit Google's ad price margins (in the desktop market). So this is a conclusive evidence of Bing's business failure.
        • Good post

          While Google lives from advertising, they are trying to diversify their sources, I still believe they are extremely dependent from search, but there is no sign any other company is ready to challenge them.
          Advertising in web connected devices is on the way up, if Google keep on grabbing a big chunk of the market, they have a bright future for the next coming years.
        • Good try, but the fact remains that, Google is still a one product

          company, and that one product is one in which there are plenty of other major players, and anyone of them could become bigger and even dominant. Bing, for example, is not going away, and if MS plays their cards right, it could displace Google as the #1 advertiser on the internet and as the #1 search engine. MS has a record of persistence when the money is right. In addition, with Facebook and Twitter becoming bigger in advertising as time goes by, there is no doubt that some of Google's advertising dollars will go elsewhere.

          Also, search engine advertising is not as effective as so many people believe, because, a lot of it is dependent on examining and targeting searches by users. TV and radio and print advertising don't depend on targeting what people already did research on. For example, I'm investigating purchasing a hybrid SUV, and I had already done some of the research with printed advertising that comes with newspapers. I'm pretty much settled on what I will be purchasing, but, I also was curious about what special deals might be out there via the internet, so I entered a search in Bing and Google for hybrid SUVs. Now I get haunted by advertising for hybrid SUVs, but specifically, advertising for the brands which I did some more targeted searches on. The point being that, in my case, the Google advertising is reflecting back to me what I already looked up. That's not effective, since, I already knew what I wanted and I didn't have to depend on any of the searches nor on any of the feedback from the Google targeted advertising. Reality is that, for the most part, people have already decided on making certain purchases, and a lot of those purchases are made off-line, and not as a result of clicks on any piece of advertising. I have never made a purchase from any company that Google advertised, and my research was mostly for further assurance on what I was mostly already decided on. Yeah, you could say that at that point, Google or Bing were of help, but my purchasing decision had already been made.

          BTW, that 2.97 billion in earnings might sound like a lot to you and me and many millions more, but, it's just "comparable" to what MS and Apple and many other companies make on similar periods. The worse part is that, it's mostly coming from the one single product or service, that being advertising via search. That's not a good position to be in, especially in an economic slowdown where advertising dollars could dry up very quickly.

          But, hey, Google should celebrate while the celebrating is good..
          • Yes any company can win over another

            That's life.
            But it's not always easy, in recent times Google was really strong and very good at executing their strategy.
            While Microsoft is a powerful "locomotive", is losing for Google in many areas, yes MS can fight back, but MS have risks too. Google not just won searching from altavista, they are winning mobile, web mail, web browsing, ...
            Yes 2014 can be the year of Bing, as it can be the year of desktop linux :-)
          • The latest earnings for Microsoft says that, Google is a loser,

            comparatively, since, Microsoft earned a whopping $5.24 billion, compared to the "puny" $2.97 billion for Google. That's $2.27 billion more in earnings than Google.

            Like I said, Google did well for a one-horse pony, while Microsoft is in another league by itself in all aspects of what comprises a tech giant.