Google at $518

Amidst all of the M&A hoopla surrounding the online advertising space currently, what has my attention the most is friggin’ Google. Seriously. It’s ridiculous. Google’s stock hit $518 today…I remember sitting on a beach in Mexico 2 years ago with some friends who had just sold off some GOOG after the stock had taken a major nosedive. I told them to hold on, that I saw the company entrenched as the hub of advertising in the 21st century. I didn’t fully believe my own words as true when I spoke them…frankly, I’m rarely prophetic certainly about stocks but it turns out a number of investors believe what I believed as I was into my 4th shot of tequila, that Google is poised to own the buying and selling of advertising. With this week’s acquisition of FeedBurner, a company that I’ve been consistently impressed with and whose management team I had the pleasure of meeting last fall. They’ve been long-rumored as a Google acquisition target and in my mind, combined the perfect combination of business integrity, solid technology, and a host of great partnerships. The Feedburner acquisitions expands Google’s dominance into the RSS Feed space and will complement its AdSense network and Doubleclick adserver well. What’s next? Well, my own attention will be closely on the roll out of their AdSense Instream product which they announced last week.