Agreed. I think they'll take an axe to their price and head back down to $100 after the consumer spending disappoints everyone in Feb, after the holiday season numbers are computed. How much spending are people really going to do? GOOG does things that are not wise for a company -- their employees are given a lot of leeway for R&D, so you have to factor that into their costs. The question is whether that R&D actually pays off. There's a lot of lame services that just don't pay off and convert into any cash. I don't think serious IT managers will switch to Google's infrastructure, either.
Sigh. Once again, Google is not HP. They know that not everything they do will directly produce revenue... and they don't particularly care. They're perfectly happy paying a hundred people to come up with 99 commercially-useless products, because they know that every now and then #100 will more than make up for the other 99. And in the meantime, their encouragement of those other 99 helps them to recruit the best and brightest. Like I said, Google has more liquid assets than it literally knows what to do with. That gives them a level of freedom that's almost unheard of since the de-facto end of Bell Labs. As long as they manage to take in enough revenue to cover most of their expenses, they can treat their cash like an endowment, and run themselves like a de-facto nonprofit organization for the next hundred years if they feel like it. As far as Google is concerned, if an investor isn't happy with their business plan, well... the "sell" button is right there on the screen when you're logged into your trading account. Google might make you rich. It might make you poor. Google itself could care less which one it ends up being, because Google exists for one thing: itself.
250 is a major support for Goog, but look at how its reacting today. Its slightly down even when the market seems fairly strong. Will it hold 250 or will it be back to 100? Under 250 is going to be a terrific short and with it not holding itself up despite indexes being up 2% is quite telling. I think Microsoft is a strong company too, but ole softy isnt going back to 60 (year 2000 highs) anytime in the next 10-20 years if ever. In the same way, Google isnt going back to 700 anytime soon if ever. It will be slammed back to IPO price where it just might be a buy again. So long Google! It was good trading you.
How dare you compare those hacks to Bell Labs. Sun is much closer to Bell Labs/PARC then google will ever be. Stop drinking the kool-aid. And as a System Architect, I've been shorting google since the low 700s. You keep right on buying - I need more suckers to sell to. edit: read this and note the date. You are fool but provide me good liquidity, so I will tolerate your uneducated diatribes. http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115922
Here is the phrase that you need to get out of your head: "this time is different". You would benefit a lot by taking a look at long term charts of great companies of yesterday and today. I am attaching a quarterly chart/all data from Texas Instruments. GOOG made a high in the 700s riding a wave of hype and momentum inside a bull market. It is highly unlikely it will get to those levels any time soon or ever(much less surpass them).