Suddenly things seem rather … Amazing. I knew they were big, but I don’t think anyone thought they were bigger than Big Blue just yet. Remember, this is a company that was only founded in 1999 and has its entire life providing online services in a virtual universe of 1s and 0s. So to now exceed the value of a company around 100 years old is pretty impressive.

Internet advertising giant Google has surpassed IBM to become the world’s third most valuable technology company, trailing only behind software giant Microsoft and network leader Cisco.

With the company’s stock trading around $475 per share Tuesday, Google’s market capitalisation reached some $145 billion, surpassing the total value of IBM at $139.5 billion.

Google surpasses IBM valuation – Indiatimes Infotech

Oh, but thats only half the story. The fact that they’re behind only Cisco and Microsoft doesn’t really mean all that much in my opinion. Google is probably one of Cisco’s biggest clients anyway. We’re talking serious bandwidth requirements here, which requires a hell of a backbone just inside the switch itself. Your average 2800 series switch in your own office just isn’t going to cut it ;-)

But theres more interesting news to be added to this tale. :-)

Google is worth some $58 billion more than the combined value of America’s three largest automakers DaimlerChrysler ($54 billion), General Motors ($20 billion) and Ford ($15 billion).

The world’s most valuable enterprise is oil company ExxonMobil, which is valued at $416 billion. Other business giants are General Electric worth approximately $367 billion and the world’s largest retailer Wal-Mart with a value of about $214 billion.

Google surpasses IBM valuation – Indiatimes Infotech

Consider that those 3 car companies own how many other smaller car companies around the world? General Motors owns Holden and Nissan to name just a couple. The list is much larger, but I’m not exactly counting myself. But I do find it interesting now that Google (and a fair few of the other large tech companies) are now larger than the largest companies in the US automobile industry combined.

And people wonder why Microsoft is scared. :-) Microsoft has never in its history seen this kind of growth. Nor has it ever had the kind of loyalty among its customers that Google has always had from its inception.

My question for those watching all this happening… How can this rate of growth not been seen as anything but the Bubble 2.0? Sure, its slower than it was previously, but when you see $1.65bn for YouTube, $750m for MySpace and now Kevin Rose and his team is rumored to be wanting $150 million for the Digg.com property. Don’t forget Yahoo!s purchases of properties like del.icio.us and Flickr.

And this is only a very small example of the massive amount of money being thrown around right now.

So is the Advertising market really capable of holding up the current market with all this money being thrown around? Or is now a good time to start treading lightly and preparing for things to snapback on itself in another catastrophic burst?