Good Night, Google Bears

Once upon a time, there was a creature known as the Google (GOOG Quote) Bear.

While Google's stock soared past analyst price targets of $200, $300, $400, the Google Bear warned that gravity would soon catch up with the stock. The stock's valuation implied impossible growth, the Google Bear warned, and its continued rise marked the return of a devil-may-care mentality of stock speculation that led to doom in the dot-com bubble.

On Friday, a day after Google delivered yet another quarter of revenue and profit growth that was better than even the more bullish forecasts, the Google Bear is an endangered species. Not in danger of extinction -- no stock can keep growing forever -- but in danger of being irrelevant for a good long while.

So, with Google's stock up nearly 8% to its highest level since January, anyone who shorted the stock going into the company's third-quarter earnings announcement must be busy this morning nursing burnt fingers. Google bulls, meanwhile, are busy raising their price targets on the stock.

Citigroup bumped its $550 target to $600 and Goldman Sachs lifted its $525 target to $595 after Google's third-quarter report, which showed a profit of $2.62 a share (above the consensus of $2.42) and net revenue of $1.87 billion (above the forecast $1.81 billion).

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