Google's stock gained 3.7 percent to 446.21 USD per share at NASDAQ today, making its market capitalization reach 131.9 billion USD to outrace IBM's 131 billion USD.

Google's share price has doubled since this year as analysts believe its profits would triple to 1.62 billion USD this year.

That is in contrast against IBM whose stock price has slumped 15 percent this year. It is thought that its profits this year will rise 11 percent and its sales will be down 4 percent.

With the most used search engine, Google has attracted increasing ads investment which targets its more than 400 million subscribers each month.

Google's price has also been boosted by reports about its talks with AOL which may lead to its purchasing of 5 percent of AOL stakes. The price jumped to 438.52 USD per share by 1:37 local time. In the mean time, IBM was quoted at 83.35 cents at the New York Stock Exchange, losing 2 cents.

IBM was founded in 1911 and is the software giant second only to Microsoft. It was also the world's largest PC maker before it sold its PC business to Lenovo. It has 329,000 employees globally.

Google is much younger than IBM. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University, established the company in 1998. 4138 employees are working for Google now.

By People's Daily Online