Google's stock price had an impressive growth in the past two weeks and, for the first time, GOOG was traded at more than $600, closing the day at $609.62.

"The shares have increased more than sevenfold from their initial public offering price of $85, bringing the nine-year-old company's market value to $190 billion - eclipsing bigger, more mature businesses like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Coca-Cola Co., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. It took 10 1/2 months for Google's stock to leap from $500 to $600 and more than a year for the journey from $400 to $500. The shares hurdled $300 in June 2005 after passing the $100 and $200 thresholds in 2004," writes AP.

Google didn't launch a lot of exciting products lately, so it's difficult to give an explanation for this sudden optimism. "Google stands to benefit because it runs the largest advertising network on the world's hottest marketing medium, the Internet," wrote AP in September. Google wants to extend its dominance in the mobile space, that's why it launched a mobile version of AdSense and ads for Google Mobile Search. A Google Phone that comes with an operating system and software produced by Google could make rich web applications more accessible and increase Google's ad revenues. Coupling this with Google's plans in the social space and collaborative software, the future sounds promising.

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