Google is now worth more than millions of American companies -- more than all but 13, in fact, now its shares have gone above $500 each. At $150 billion, it's now worth more than IBM, Hewlett-Packard and all other technology companies except Microsoft and Cisco, reports The New York Times.
Further, the paper points out that Google's co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are now "the 12th and 13th richest people in the United States, according to Forbes magazine -- and, at 33, the youngest in the top 400. Their share holdings alone are worth more than $15 billion each, on top of the more than $2 billion each in cash they have received for selling some shares already."
Another bubble?
Google's stock price is not at the extreme level of the turn of the millennium. Google's value today is only slightly higher than the $150 billion that Yahoo reached in January 2000. That year Yahoo only earned a profit of $71 million on sales of $1.1 billion; Google, in contrast, is expected to record profits of $2.8 billion this year on gross revenue of $10 billion.
