Google shares have ballooned 24% since G+ launch

While higher revenues in Q2 2011 are partly the reason, Google+ has certainly impressed investors

It’s high times for the hottest tech companies. First, there’s Apple, which posted $28.6 billion in revenue for its Q3 2011, the company’s best quarter ever. Then there’s e-commerce giant Amazon, whose market cap at last surpassed $100 billion after the company posted the strongest revenue growth in a decade.

And, of course, there’s Google, the search giant-gone-social. It’s been exactly a month since Google+ launched, so I couldn’t help but wonder how the new networking and microblogging service was affecting investors’ perspectives of the latest entrant to the social media foray.

Things are looking very good.

On June 28, the day Google+ was released as a public beta, shares sat at $493.65 a pop. Today, a month later, those shares have increased by $117.29 to $610.94, a 23.76 percent increase.

Some might be tempted to think that this dramatic increase had much to do with Google’s reporting of its Q2 2011 financial results. CEO and co-founder Larry Page announced in mid-July that the company had collected revenues of $9.03 billion, a 32 percent increase over the same period from 2010, which boasted $6.82 billion in revenues. Net income was $204 million, versus $69 million the year before.

But that’s not the whole story. Even before Page’s announcement, Google’s stock was steadily on the rise. On July 14, the day of the report, shares closed at $528.94, representing $35.29 in growth since the launch of Google+.

If any online sector is fickle, however, that sector is social media. The analogy I like to use most is that of a party. Myspace, a few years back, was the place to hang out with all your friends, share photos, express yourself and socialize online. But, like any good party, excitement over Myspace slowly dwindled until it sold to an ad company for $35 million.

Meanwhile, everyone hopped over onto Facebook and, more recently, Twitter, but even those massively popular platforms feel like rickety ships in the face of a newly born service like Google+.

Stealing users from established players isn’t a walk in the park, though, so we won’t know how this all ends for many months, if not years.

In the meantime, here’s a little retrospective on our best and most monumental posts over the past month concerning Google+:

A new hope? Google tries going social again (06/28)
An ode to independence from Facebook (07/04)
Facebook has 750M members, Zuckerberg disses Google (07/06)
Google +1 button already squashing Twitter plugins (07/08)
Katango pokes a hole in Google+ circles (07/12)
Google+ statistics: 10M members, 1B daily shares (07/14)
One billion shares? How Google exaggerated G+ stats (07/14)
Google+ for iPhone should have awed, but it bores (07/20)
Google+Fridge to bring nuance, richness to circles (07/21)
Google+ now pulling in 20 million unique visitors (07/22)
Google+ visits down, but the party ain't over yet (07/28)