Google's Price Target Taboo

Like the greats of baseball, former stock analyst Henry Blodget will forever be associated with a number that has nothing to do with a uniform. DiMaggio: 56. Ruth: 60. Aaron: 755.

Blodget: 400.

Unlike those greats, however, Blodget's number -- the price target he infamously put on Amazon.com(AMZN) in December 1998 -- carries a tinge of notoriety, an asterisk that bursts like a firecracker into a larger, less triumphant story. Blodget's bold call inaugurated an era of the stock market that many investors have since labored to rub out of their memories: His $400 price target smashed a champagne bottle on the ill-fated S.S. Dot-Com Bubble.

Six and a half years on, "Blodget 400" not only remains a lively piece of market lore, it's getting hard to avoid. That's because another fast-charging technology upstart named Google(GOOG) sits on the precipice of breaking above the $300 barrier for the second time in a month and, if its profit keeps growing at the recent breakneck pace, seems determined to reach $400.

And that presents an unusual quandary for research analysts. Tracking the trajectory of Google's burgeoning financials, analysts have ratcheted up their price targets on the stock to $300, then $330, then $350 and, most recently, $360. After all, Google's $704 million profit in the past 12 months was up 390% from the previous 12-month period.

But even though Google has repeatedly blown away the Street's numbers, analysts are still very much self-conscious about their price targets.

Who can blame them? Who wants to be the first to declare that Google will hit -- dare it be said -- $400?

Which is kind of ironic, because back in 1998, Blodget said he was boldly putting "my money where my mouth is" in a "hypocritical stock market." The $400 target was meant, according to Blodget, as a blow for truth.