$1,000 Google? Sure, but Why Bother?

Five hundred Google. Six hundred Google. Seven hundred Google.

Are we going to see $1,000 Google(GOOG Quote)?

Why not? After all, isn't the sky the limit? Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., just raised his price target for the stock yesterday to $850. So I figure I'd go to four figures.

And Wall Street always likes a big round number. Dow 10,000. Nasdaq 5,000, oil $100.

Google hit a new record of $736 yesterday. It's been gaining an average of about $5 a day since it started taking off two months ago. By my calendar, it's on track to hit the big $1,000 in the last week in January. You want to take the over or the under?

If everyone piles on, it could of course get there much sooner. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

So what would $1,000 Google look like?

That stock price would give this nine-year old company a market value of around $310 billion. That's still smaller than the likes of Exxon(XOM Quote), at $486 billion, and General Electric (GE Quote) at $412 billion. And it's still slightly behind Microsoft (MSFT Quote) at $344 billion.

But at $1,000 a share, Google would be worth more than veteran drug giants Merck (MRK Quote) and Pfizer (PFE Quote) together. It would be worth twice as much as Apple (AAPL Quote).

That's some baby.

But the company's soaring stock market fortune raises one big question: What sort of long-term return can the shares offer from these levels?