Google Hits $600: A Round-Up of Chatter

Google's stock price briefly topped $600 a share today, a new high. It seems Google is everywhere in the business press, and not just for this latest stock market high water mark. A quick round-up of Google chatter:

Bloomberg canvassed over 30 stock analysts for their price forecasts. The conclusion: Google went up $100 in the last 11 months, but $700 will be harder to reach, especially should the company's acquisition of DoubleClick fall through.

ZDNet reports today on a joint announcement by Google and IBM. The companies will provide data centers for remote computer programming. The data centers will allow students from several universities, including MIT and Stanford, access to the processing power needed to write software code involving massive amounts of data. IBM said that "the goal of this initiative is to improve computer science students' knowledge of highly parallel computing practices." It won't exactly hurt the flow of well-prepared engineering talent into the companies either.

The NY Times has an in-depth piece today on Google's hopes for its GPhone. The article stresses Google's desire to "extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile Internet, a small market today, but one that is expected to grow rapidly," as well as the fact that "Google is not creating a gadget to rival the iPhone, but rather creating software that will be an alternative to Windows Mobile from Microsoft and other operating systems."

Finally, a California Court of Appeals reinstated an age discrimination lawsuit against Google brought by a 55-year-old manager who claims he was told he was "too old to matter," and that his "fuddy-duddy" attitude did not fit in with the corporate culture.

(Image of Google logo by warrentedarrest, CC 2.0)