WebProNews

The GOOG spent a brief time over the $600 mark, putting it in some pretty good company for a few minutes.

All good things come to an end, and Google's ride above $600 only lasted a few minutes. That's for today. Tomorrow, who knows?

That historic mark tallied just one of the many steps in Google's public life, which has made Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin worth over $17 billion each, according to Bloomberg. Only Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, the Washington Post, and two other stocks occupy such rarefied air.

Anyone else who wants to catch Google in its business will need to put in a lot of work to stand a chance of it. Even then, it may not be enough to rope in that thoroughbred:

"It's got a long way to go over the next few years unless someone's going to compete like hell with them," said Jon Burnham, chief executive officer of Burnham Securities, which manages about $3 billion in New York and owns Google shares. "I don't see that coming."

Neither does anyone else today, but once upon a time Google came along to knock AltaVista off its perch. Just because it hasn't happened to Google doesn't mean it can't.

UPDATE: Google closed at $609.62. They have a bigger market cap than Wal-Mart, by about $6 billion.