Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Leave it to Google Inc., whose name is derived from the word for one followed by a hundred zeros, to defy the law of large numbers.

Google's share price blew past $600 at the beginning of October and ended the month by rising above $700 for the first time. The Mountain View, California-based company's stock is the fifth-most costly among companies listed on the New York, Nasdaq or American exchanges, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

October also marked the first time that Google jumped from one hundred-dollar threshold to the next without hesitation. As recently as Aug. 21, for example, the stock changed hands for less than $500. That barrier was first broken last November.

The surge allowed Google, the owner of the world's most- popular site for Internet searches, to leapfrog eight companies by market value.

Google surpassed Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, on Oct. 5 and Procter & Gamble Co., the biggest U.S. maker of consumer goods, two days ago. In between, the company went past Johnson & Johnson, Chevron Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., in that order.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., whose practice of never splitting its stock gave the company a role model, rounded out the list. (Berkshire's two classes of shares, Seaboard Corp. and Washington Post Co. are the only exchange-listed stocks with higher price tags than Google, which closed at $707 yesterday.)

Well-Received Expansion

Google's market value exceeded $200 billion for the first time in October and ended the month at $220.7 billion. Only Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp. and AT&T Inc. have a higher market capitalization among U.S. companies.

All this shows how much faith Google's performance as a company has generated. Sales have grown more than 50 percent in every quarter since the company went public -- at $85 a share -- in August 2004 and surpassed $4 billion last quarter.

Third-quarter profit rose 46 percent as the company began selling ads in video clips on YouTube, a site bought last year for $1.65 billion. Net income, at $1.07 billion, exceeded the billion-dollar mark for the third time in four quarters.

Google is pushing into mobile-phone software and services and rolling out software for use on so-called social networking sites, including News Corp.'s MySpace. It's also joining forces with Nielsen Co. to help television advertisers track viewers.

The stock's valuation after its 25 percent advance last month suggests investors are already banking on these ventures. Google ended October at 13.4 times sales, the highest ratio for a computer-related company in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Ratios Worth Watching

Google's price relative to the average earnings estimate for 2008, as compiled in a Bloomberg survey of analysts, ranks third among 71 technology shares in the S&P 500. The price also is the fifth highest relative to cash flow and sixth relative to book value, or the value of assets minus liabilities.

The stock's ratios are 34.5 times, 40.4 times and 10.5 times, respectively. Although they aren't as attention-getting as $220.7 billion, or even $4 billion, they highlight the room for disappointment if the larger numbers stop growing so fast.

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The price that Garmin Ltd. or TomTom NV ultimately pays to take over Tele Atlas NV, the world's second-largest producer of digital maps, will show how much scarcity value a money-losing company can have.

Tele Atlas dominates the market for maps used in global positioning systems along with Navteq Corp., which Nokia Oyj agreed to acquire a month ago. Even so, the company hasn't recorded a full-year profit in a decade.

For the third quarter, the Den Bosch, Netherlands-based company posted a loss of 1.9 million euros ($2.7 million). The performance contrasted with the $39.9 million in earnings that Navteq, based in Chicago, reported yesterday.

Tele Atlas's history of losses didn't stop Garmin, the biggest U.S. maker of car-navigation devices, from bidding 15 percent more than Tom Tom, the largest in the world. The stock rose 13 percent above Garmin's offer to 27.58 euros -- a price that's double the company's enterprise value, or market value after adjusting for cash and debt. Navteq went for 2.1 times.

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Scarcity value has also bolstered shares of Areva SA, the world's largest builder of nuclear plants. There may not be much left once France's nuclear agency completes the proposed sale of a 25 percent stake.

Just 4 percent of the Paris-based company's shares currently trade publicly. Almost all the rest belong to the French atomic-energy commission, the country's government and state-controlled companies and funds.

The agency, whose formal name is Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, needs to come up with 5 billion euros ($7.2 billion) to pay for decommissioning aging plants as French law requires.

By selling the stock, the commission may not only cover those costs but also raise funds to expand Areva. The holding would fetch 6.7 billion euros at this year's average price of 718.39 euros, 4 percent less than yesterday's close.

Areva dropped 1.4 percent yesterday after Alain Bugat, the agency's chairman, cited the proposal in an interview. It won't be a surprise to see further losses as the plan moves forward.

To contact the writer of this column: David Wilson in New York at dwilson@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 1, 2007 00:09 EDT