Internet search titan Google saw its shares break the $400 (€341; £232) barrier on Thursday.
The company's $118.8 billion stock market value edged it past the Coca-Cola Company, the Walt Disney Company and Cisco Systems, which was once the world's most valuable company during the first dot.com boom.
California-headquartered Google, which generates the vast majority of its income by selling advertising linked to online searches, came to the US Nasdaq market just fifteen months ago with an $85 share price. Its meteoric rise has been fuelled by the growth potential of new products.
These include Google Base [WAMN: 16-Nov-05] which may signal a major assault on the lucrative classified advertising market, and a controversial digital library service.
Says Mark Mahaney, an analyst at Citigroup Investment Research: "The more products that they demo formally or informally, the more investors appreciate the expansion opportunities for Google."
Data sourced from Financial Times online; additional content by WARC staff
