Google Target: $2,000 or $100?

Posted on January 13, 2006

While there are many analysts forecasting Google to climb higher towards $600 or $700 (one even forecasts $2,000) another expert believes the path for Google is down to $100. Fortune reports that Henry Blodget, well-known in the 90s for forecasting a $400 Amazon, believes there is a scenario that could send Google to $100.

It's all worth remembering for two reasons. First, that kind of mania has taken hold of another stock -- Google. Last week, Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy, one of the best known experts on the search industry, put a $600 price target on the stock, only to be topped two days later by Mark Stahlman at Caris & Co., who said that over the longer term Google would likely hit $2000. The stock, which had been trading at about $425, instantly shot up to near $475. It closed Thursday at $463.
Second, Henry Blodget himself has become one of Google's most vocal bears. Indeed, on Tuesday, readers of his blog, InternetOutsider, found the following next to a picture of a grizzly: "No one else is writing this piece, so it will have to be me. I should say upfront that I'm not predicting that this will happen (yet), and I'm certainly not making a recommendation. I'm just laying out a scenario that could kneecap Google and take its stock back to, say, $100 a share."

Blodget's blog can be found here and here is the entry he wrote about Google falling to $100. Google does have some competition to AdSense coming from Yahoo, Microsoft and start-ups. How Google manages to fend of competitors will probably decide whether Google's stock continues climbing or falls.

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