$1000/sh seems like a more momentous headline than $330B market cap.

On the other hand, It's more likely that we see the headline "$1T company" than "$3030.30/sh"

They could've hit this years ago by doing a 10:1 stock consolidation. Fetishizing over share prices is meaningless. What if they had only six shares?

Market cap is what matters.

Berkshire Hathaway class A is current 175821/sh :) extreme example.

But my point was that, while market cap is all that matters, people still fixate on round numbers

That's one way to exclude peasants from investing in your company.

BRKB is only $117 though.

Breaking news: Prominent company's stock value gets to big round number.

True that. Too many people are obsessed with the stock price, when really it's just marketcap/outstanding shares...

If a person owns share of GOOG, then I think its allowable.

I trade stocks, it's a large part (majority?) of my income. The only metric I care about is the market value of my shares over the book value (ie. percent increase). It's the only thing that counts (since it directly reflects my profit).

Edit - milestones are nice, they're a bit of a psychological boost - but ultimately are worthless (except for said psychological boost they give to other traders, thus potentially driving up price).

Agreed.

Surprised to see so many financially-minded people fail to understand how the market cap is a better indicator value, not individual stock price.

Granted, this is still a great feat for $GOOG, and it appears they will continue to innovate and sustain such growth.

I think it's a second-order, behavior-finance oriented line of thinking. I know that stock price is basically arbitrary and market cap is a much better measure of value. (And arguably, earnings and growth rate are even better than market cap.) However, I also know that many people consider $1000/share to be an important psychological milestone, and that it will command news headlines when the stock makes it. And so, understanding that the stock market is to some extent a beauty contest and other peoples' perception of a stock's momentum influences the stock price, it's rational for me to believe that when it hits $1000 it will go up, at least in the short term. It's also rational for me to feed into and cheerlead that perspective, because as a Google shareholder, I benefit when other people believe Google stock is going up.