While it’s hardly surprising anymore to hear about how much money Apple has (hint: it’s more than the GDP of most countries), one fact puts it into perspective: Apple’s worth more than Google and Microsoft combined.

I am an ignoramus when it comes to the stock market, but I can at least add this much.

Apple’s market capitalization: $459.66 billion.
Google’s market capitalization: $199.03 billion.
Microsoft’s market capitalization: $256.10 billion.

Granted, Apple is “only” worth $4.53 billion more than the combined financial worth of Google and Microsoft, but that’s still enough money for them to get into the interplanetary real estate market. But let’s arbitrarily compare Apple’s value to lots of other things that are worth a lot of money:

Budget of NASA: $17.8 million
GDP of Romania: $161.62 billion
GDP of South Africa: $275.5 billion
Total military budget of U.S.: $683.7 billion

Actually, that’s all of the expensive stuff I can think of. At any rate, you get the picture. Apple is ridiculously wealthy.

Securing Facebook could have a synergistic effect for the winner platform however it is doubtful that it will significantly change listing revenues at either exchange. According to insiders on Wall Street, Facebook could file IPO documents with regulators as soon as March. Sources also report that Facebook has already reserved their ticker symbol as “FB”.

CFO David Ebersman and other prominent members of Facebook’s staff have already heard from both exchange platforms on the merits of choosing one versus another but no decisions have yet been made. As their campaigns push forward I’m sure we’ll hear a decision from Facebook soon.

WebProNews gave you the run-down of Google’s conference where they revealed that their Google Sites revenues were up 29% over their fourth quarter earnings in 2010 and that they passed the $10 billion mark for quarterly earnings, a first in their history. Even their growth from the third quarter to the fourth quarter in 2011 was up 9%.

Everything’s up! Everybody’s rich! If you work at Google you can’t even pour a cup of coffee in your office without the bass line from The O’Jay’s ‘For The Love Of Money’ playing automatically.

So… why’re people disappointed with Google’s record-breaking earnings?

Reuters reports that analysts “zeroed in on an 8 percent drop in cost-per-click, or money paid by marketers to the company for search ads, versus analyst estimates of a slight increase.”

Mayuresh Masurekar, an analyst at Colins Stewart, told Reuters, “The major question is: Is this a one-time thing or is this something that is going to continue because the nature of the business has changed.”

Even the tea leaf readers on Twitter echoed the sentiment.

The results were disappointing enough that the speculators on Wall Street, in their esoteric wisdom, considered Google’s earnings to have missed expectations – a declaration that sent shares of Google falling more than 9% after the earnings were announced. The Wall Street Journal elaborated on the reaction from investors and said, “Though Google’s quarterly performance still represented a sequential increase, investors voiced concerns that its growth had decelerated from previous quarters. The company’s net revenue of $8.13 billion missed consensus estimates of $8.4 billion.”

$270,000,000 is a ton of money, don’t get me wrong. It’s more money than I will see in my entire lifetime; I probably won’t even earn a quarter of that while I’m alive. It’s so much money that it might as well be Monopoly money. But still, in terms of Google Bucks, it’s only a little over 3% of that $8.13 net revenue they posted and when you’re parsing money expectations in the value of billions, should this really be enough of a “loss” to send Google shares into a decline?

Based on the effect the news of Google’s earnings had on the stock market, the answer would be a resounding yes: all of these “concerns” expressed by shamans of Wall Street were enough to send Google’s shares dropping more than $57.

Google’s shares have started to recover a little bit today, only being down $50.96 this morning, but all of this market speculation has got me wondering: what do people really expect of Google? Saying that Google “underperformed” despite their shares being some of the most valuable on the market and they posted significant increases revenues from not just last quarter but last year is puzzling and so I would really like to know exactly what analysts expect from Google? Would that $270 million of missed revenue really have made that much of a difference in the success of a company that is now making over $10 billion for quarterly earnings? Google still generating tons of revenue. What kind of bizarro market declares the earnings of billions but not enough billions to be a disappointment? It seems ludicrous.

So what do you think? Is this a tempest in a tea cup that Wall Street is stirring with Google? Are expectations so high for Google right now that anything short of generating profits laced in Martian gold is considered a disappointment? Seriously, what do people expect from Google these days when something like making more billions of dollars doesn’t quite get it done? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Like The O’Jays told you all: don’t let money ruin ya.

Apple Inc. shares have been markedly higher today than they’ve ever been. The first peak occurred this morning around 10AM EST when shares increased to $427.18. The peak was short-lived as the value quickly dipped down but still hovered well above any previously observed levels. Still, this alone would have been a milestone for Apple but the good news from the NYSE pit wasn’t done dishing out the good news yet.

Roughly 45 minutes later, shares of Apple bounced back above the $427 mark and bested the previous record set earlier in the morning by peaking at $427.75. The shares dipped down again but have remained above the $423 watermark throughout the day so far. A screenshot of the rollercoaster thrill road known as Apple Makes Record Amounts Of Money is below.

One has to wonder if ChangeWave’s report from earlier today that revealed people have got the iPhone-lust in their eyes more than ever has driven the boost in Apple’s shares. Maybe it was the fact this is the five-year anniversary of the first iPhone’s debut. Maybe speculators are just excited because it’s CES week and anything related to technology and being cool makes people wanna get rich. Maybe it’s all of these factors or none of these factors (my money’s on the ChangeWave report, really). Whatever the cause, some stock market paladins will have some pretty well-lined coffers at the end of today.

This IPO values the company at around $12.8 billion.

The oversubscribed company added five million shares to its offering, upping the figure from 30 million shares sold to 35 million shares sold. This still only amounts to 5.5% of the company.

The $20 a share pricing is slightly higher than what was expected. The price range that was originally discussed was between $16 and $18 a share.

It looks like most of the trepidation surrounding Groupon’s IPO went by the wayside as people rushed to buy a piece of the company. On the bumpy road to an IPO, Groupon had been hit with executive troubles, and criticism of accounting practices.

This IPO is the second largest by an internet-based company – all time. Of course, the biggest IPO crown belongs to Google in 2004. Groupon will begin trading Friday under the symbol “GRPN.”

Here’s some of the chatter surrounding the huge IPO:

Rocky Agrawal at VentureBeat says that he still believes that Groupon is a “terrible company for investors, small businesses and ultimately for consumers.” But he’s buying shares –

All of that said, I’ve put in my request with my broker for shares in the IPO because Groupon has scientifically engineered its IPO to inflate share prices. Its float is one of the tiniest in the last decade. Most likely this thing will have a nice pop.

What do you think of Groupon’s IPO? Let us know in the comments.

From the photos emerging and the commentary on Twitter, it is clear that many think he looked gaunt and unhealthy. Many are saying that that his voice sounded weak. Leander Kahney at Cult of Mac has a different opinion, saying “There was a lot of good stuff unveiled by Apple this morning at WWDC. But the best news? Steve Jobs looked pretty healthy. Yeah, he didn’t spend much time on stage. Yes, he looks thinner than normal. Yes, he had to hitch his jeans up a couple of times. But all-in-all, I thought he looked pretty vibrant and energetic on stage.”

This reading of the situation seems to be in total opposition with the views on Twitter, with nearly every tweet I’ve seen regarding Jobs’ health saying that he didn’t look good. If you go by the market, they also seem to agree that he didn’t look too great.

It seems that Job’s poor health and appearance at the WWDC has had an effect on Apple stock. According to the AP, Apple’s stock is down 1.3% in afternoon trading. It was up this morning, but fell shortly after Jobs left the stage. Apparently investors are worried about the effect Job’s declining health may have on the company. It seems unlikely that even the unfortunate event of Job’s death would derail the company, however. Apple just became the worlds most valuable brand according to a report by Millward Brown

Jobs received a warm ovation as he took the stage, coming out to an ironic playing of James Brown’s “I Feel Good.” During the keynote, he discussed their new Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and their new cloud services entitled iCloud.

Here are a couple of photos snapped of Jobs, the first courtesy of Engadget and the second courtesy of tweet from xdamman, via his Instagram account.

Here’s what the Twitterverse is saying about Jobs’ appearance:

From what you’ve seen, what do you think?

According to The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, the stock will launch Thursday on the NYSE under the name LNKD. LinkedIn will price its offering of 7.8 million shares somewhere between $32 and $35. That means that their initial valuation will be somewhere between $3 billion and $3.3 billion.

LinkedIn has already been traded on secondary markets like SharesPost and SecondMarket at anywhere between $8.75 to $31 a share.

“We cannot assure you that the price of our Class A common stock will equal or exceed the price at which our securities have traded on these private secondary markets,” LinkedIn has said.

At last reporting, LinkedIn had over 100 million members. In comparison, Facebook has over 600 million. There are rumors that Facebook’s IPO may be coming in 2012, and some have speculated that it could be valued at an unbelievable $100 billion.

Another social company rumored to be in talks for an IPO is daily deals provider Groupon. After turning down a generous offer from Google ($23 billion), it has been rumored that Groupon could conduct a $25 billion IPO as early as this year.

LinkedIn’s stock will have a dual-class structure. This means that there will be two types of shares – Class A and Class B. LinkedIn founders and early investors will have Class B shares which will have 10 stockholder votes per share. The general public will have Class A shares, with one vote per share.

According to the WSJ, Executive Chairman Reid Hoffman will hold Class B stock the will represents 21.7% of the voting power.

Today, AOL announced the launch of AOL industry, a media outlet that will track specific sectors of industry. It will begin with sites in the Energy and Defense sectors. It will have full LinkedIn integration to facilitate connections between news-makers in these certain industries.

Google’s Stock Slips $40

Google opened at $734.80, and by one o’clock, had dipped as low as $677.18.  After people ate lunch – or lost it – they seem to have regained some confidence, as the stock climbed up to close at $693.84.

While we watched this mini-catastrophe take place, we monitored all the official blogs and out-of-the-way sources, but there was nothing to suggest what was behind the drop.  Unfortunately, there still isn’t.  Nothing specific, anyway.  Yet there are a couple of clues.

A big one is the state of America’s economy.  The Dow Jones and Nasdaq weren’t hurt as badly today as yesterday, but some of the effect may have found its way to Google.  Weakness in the housing market and the dollar itself, the price of oil . . . none of this is good.  Henry Blodget thinks there might also have been a “collective realization that Google is likely not immune to a recession.”

After admiring Google’s stockholders for several years, the people who aren’t among them will probably find themselves taking a lot fewer Tums.  And going into tomorrow’s trading day, they’ll probably be a lot less scared.