We are all reading story after story about this relatively new company called Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), which now has a valuation exceeding $145 billion after closing today around $625, adding almost $10 from yesterday's all-time high. In the past year, I probably have done at least 20 stories myself, and the public fascination continues.

Google has very quickly built an empire that even the mighty Microsoft Corp.(NASDAQ: MSFT) is losing sleep over. Microsoft Chairman Steve Ballmer is tired of having to field questions about Google at what are supposed to be Microsoft meetings. However, despite all the good news, I think things are getting a tad pricey right now. But you still hear numbers literally being thrown into the media current by silly guys in need of attention (Henry Blodget) who have long been considered passé, most recently to the tune of Google achieving a $2,000 price tag. Of course, no time frame was associated with this prediction, so it is pretty much worthless gossip.

If Google was $2,000 per share, it would have a capitalization of $470 billion. For comparison, General Electric (NYSE: GE) is valued at $430 billion, and Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) is valued at $516 billion, so it would be jockeying for position as the largest company in the world.

As it stands today, you could trade Google for all of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) -- valued at $135 billion -- and have money left over to buy all $9.8 billion worth of Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ: ISRG), still leaving a few bucks for a lifetime of fine dining. This comes to mind because this is what I have actually done instead. The combination has destroyed Google in terms of stock appreciation. Nevertheless I am gaining appreciation for Google in many ways. I think the company has done, and is doing, many smart things. Many of its adventures have not borne fruit yet, but it has carved out a HUGE swath of the internet that will not be rivaled anytime soon, and it is still growing. Does this growth and these investments (expenditures) justify the price today? The answer to that question in my opinion is no, not today. I think Google will pull back again after its October 18th earnings report.

Nintendo's stock was up again last night in Tokyo. No wonder. It is still beating Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Sony (NYSE: SNE) with newer and better innovations in the game console business.

The latest gem from the Japanese gaming firm is the Wii Fit.

According to Reuters "the new game features a pressure-sensing mat called the "Wii Balance Board", which looks like a set of bathroom scales and can sense when a person moves and leans, enabling players to "head" virtual soccer balls and experience ski jumping on a TV screen." It can also be used for yoga and other exercises.

The poor people who make the Xbox 360 and PS3 must be scratching their heads. First, Nintendo beat them in units sales for next generation game sales. Now, the smaller company comes to market with a product that pushes the envelop of what a video game is and what it can do.

Perhaps the people at Microsoft and Sony are not interested in fitness.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) seems to be reversing itself a little lately, as evidenced by the latest move with one of its flagship products. That is, the world's largest software maker is not requiring the pesky "Windows Genuine Advantage" product authentication when customers of its web browser, Internet Explorer 7, are upgrading to the latest version of that software.

Usually, Microsoft is incredibly paranoid about verifying authenticity of its Windows operating system (not a stolen or hacked copy) and will only allow bug fixes and upgrades to Windows software installations that have been 'authenticated' using Microsoft's online verification system. Internet Explorer, the company's market share-leading web browser product, seems to be deviating from that past stance, however. Why would Microsoft stop forcing customers who are upgrading the Internet Explorer program on their PCs to verify if their Windows software is 100% legit?

Texas must hate successful internet giants. At least, that is what one must think after two sets of goofy, litigious lawsuits were brought against Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) in the last two months. On top of the Polaris lawsuit from a few months ago that accused the internet giants of violating its email filtering patent, Performance Pricing, Inc. (from Austin, Texas) now says that the three internet giants, along with AOL, LLC (part of Time Warner, Inc. (NYSE: TWX)) have violated patents related to -- get this -- a "transaction system."

Apparently some smaller firms have made it a point to make money not with innovation and marketing, but from trying to patent basic business practices and processes. This time around, these four companies have been charged with using Performance Pricing's technology "in methods and systems that they make, use, sell and offer to sell."

Is having a website that transacts business with customers a process that is patentable? I'm waiting for Performance Pricing to sue the other hundred million website operators who transact business with customers. Excuse me while I twiddle my thumbs here.

Is this "technology" even patentable? My guess is that the U.S. patent in question, 6,978,253, described as "Systems and Methods for Transacting Business Over a Global Communications Network such as the Internet" will be laughed out of court once it reaches that stage. Performance Pricing has requested a jury trial.

Following a price cut in Europe, Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE) will reduce the price of the PS3 in its home market of Japan as well. According to MarketWatch, the company will also "introduce a new scaled-down model from November, ahead of the holiday shopping season."

Why now? And, why not cut prices in the U.S. market?

After lagging Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft Coporation's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony faces an opportunity and a major challenge. If it cannot address both, sales of the PS3 may remain stuck in third place behind its two rivals.

Nintendo has indicated that it cannot produce enough Wii game consoles to meet holiday demand. The Wii is popular because it is easy to use for casual gamers and is less expensive than its rivals. Sony has a chance to capitalize on Nintendo's mistake.

Microsoft has launched its Halo 3 video game. It sold $300 million worth of copies in the first week and is said to have helped double sales of Xbox 360. Sony can't afford to have the Xbox gather too much momentum as the big November/December sales season approaches.

Sony can cut prices in the important U.S. market now, or suffer the consequence of missing a chance to get back into the game.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

MSNBC.com, which is a joint venture (JV) between Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and GE (NYSE: GE), has been around for about 11 years. Interestingly enough, the JV hasn't struck any acquisitions – that is, until now.

MSNBC has agreed to buy social media site, Newsvine (the price tag was not disclosed).

In fact, Newsvine has only five employees and raised a mere $1.5 million in venture capital. Yet, the company certainly is efficient. After all, the growth has been strong and the website gets about 1 million unique visitors per month.

Then again, Newsvine leverages the power of its community. Users can vote and comment on articles, which creates lots of frequency and loyalty.

What's more, Newsvine will keep its identity, which is smart. It's often the case that a big organization can dampen innovation.

But, I'm sure we'll start seeing some cross pollination, such as placing Newsvine features on MSNBC.com.

And, if you want to check out other recent M&A transaction, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Shortages of the ultra-popular Nintendo Wii game console may do what Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 and Sony (NYSE: SNE) PS3 have not been able to do in the competitive marketplace. They may give the two companies trying to catch the Wii a leg up for the holidays. Nintendo "said it cannot keep up with demand and that U.S. consumers should expect shortages this holiday season," according to The New York Post. The paper adds that "just last month the Wii became the best-selling console over Microsoft's popular XBox 360 and Sony's ailing PlayStation 3, pulling a virtual hat trick by making the Wii the must-have device in North America, Europe and Japan."

The news is bad for Nintendo shareholders by good for Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft has just launched is popular "Halo 3" game which has already hit sales of over $300 million. Early evidence shows that the game has helped double Xbox 360 sales in the early going. Sony has just dropped the price on the PS3 in Europe, and the industry believes that it will follow suit in the US.

Nintendo may have fallen into one of the great traps in consumer electronics--underestimating the popularity of its own product. If so, it is a major gaffe for the Japanese company. It is hard to imagine Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) running low on iPods, iPhones, or Macs. But, then again, it may be better run than Nintendo is.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Owners of the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 who have the Xbox Live internet connection can now download a free game called Yaris The game stars a car that has "a giant tentacle that reaches out of its roof to shoot enemies as it races through a futuristic tunnel, sometimes within inches of soaring fireballs," according to The New York Times.

The odd thing about the game is that the Yaris is a real car, made by Toyota (NYSE: TM). The vehicle is inexpensive and aimed at young drivers. Toyota feels that instead of running traditional ads in video games, it is better to offer an entire game and give potential customers an experience instead of a marketing message.

The move seems like a good idea, but it may have two drawbacks. The first is that the video game world may get crowded with games from advertisers, especially if moves into the market by companies like Toyota work. A crowded market mean each product game is likely to get less "face time" with players and companies will have to spend more money to build better and better games and keep ahead of the competition.

The other issue is that much of the video game business has become based on violence and some of that involves cars and other vehicles. Take "Grand Theft Auto" as an example. Does Toyota want to associate itself with a media platform that uses cars are agents of heinous acts?

Maybe not.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Nintendo's Wii has been the big success of the latest generation of video game consoles. Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 is making up some ground with the success of Halo 3. As Doug McIntyre recently wrote, its first week sales of over $300 million could "pull the Xbox 360 out of the mud."

But where does all of this leave Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE)? Probably nowhere good. With Wii already having established itself as the big winner and Microsoft making a late push toward success, Sony would appear to be the odd man out.

But BusinessWeek interviewed Kazuo Hirai, the marketing man in charge of the PlayStation 3, about how the company is looking to right the ship. He was predictably optimistic, saying that the company would be releasing a lot more games over the next few months, and really emphasizing the PS3 as a gaming system, whereas before, it was marketed as a sort of all in one entertainment system -- obviously that strategy didn't work.

So far the PlayStation 3 has created staggering losses for Sony, and a price-cut will probably be necessary if the machine has any chance. But whatever Sony does, it may be too late.

This week in Advertising Age:

A freebie tool, TrialPay, is a new web tool created to serve the desires of customers to get free stuff, and companies wishing to push its product by giving away freebies. For example, if while browsing a participating retail site you found an MP4 player you'd like, but don't want to pay for, you can select Checkout by TrialPay, which might respond with an offer from an online music sales site offering to buy the MP4 for you if you buy X number of songs from them. You end up paying, for sure, but you might save a few bucks along the way.

Viral marketing, creating web content appealing enough that it inspires peer to peer recommendations, is a hot segment of web marketing. AA lists the 10 most prolific viral marketers, according to Competitrack -- Nike (NYSE: NKE), Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Volkswagen, Axe, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), Adidas, PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) and McDonald's (NYSE: MCD). Getting ready to move? Be prepared for an onslaught of pitches. AA finds that pre-movers are also big spenders, fixing up their houses, buying new furniture and appliances, and so on.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) is known as a stifler of individual culture in many ways, and why would it not be? Most companies that are decades old, global, and are billion-dollar enterprises emerged from a shifty, risk-taking entrepreneurship to bureaucratic, slow-moving, corporate monstrosities with so many layers of management that they would make the world's largest sheet cake jealous. Unfortunately for Microsoft, that apparent corporate culture is not sitting well with Bungie Studios, the game studio that created the Halo game series and have made more gaming and entertainment money for Microsoft that all other efforts combined. Halo 3, the latest in the series, has made $300 million for the company -- and it's not even two weeks out of release yet.

Is Bungie really trying to split away from its large corporate parent? Bungie pulled away from its parent to develop Halo 3 and even blocked entrance into its studio by Microsoft employees as development ramped up. Is this a sign of a small company not wanting to be ruled by its corporate overlord. Yes, it is -- but the best product sometimes comes from non-interference from the top brass. It's when you let Harvard MBAs and other folks out of touch with the real world start mandating things that innate innovativeness becomes trampled upon.

This is precisely what Bungie developers probably recognized. But to go as far as stating they want out of the marriage with Microsoft? That's intriguing, to put it mildly. I agree with Dvorak here -- in contrast to Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), which encourages innovation and non-meddling from its employee population -- and then lets those ideas become actual products -- Microsoft is acting like some anti-innovation dinosaur in this case from all appearances. The world could stand to let smaller divisions do what they do best without interference from the large, ill-equipped bureaucracy.

As reported on Engadget yesterday, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) is set to launch a newer, slimmer Zune digital media player in November. It's adding two new products to the Zune ecosystem as well, both of which are based on flash memory instead of using hard drives. In essence, Microsoft is trying to catch up, once again, to Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPod lineup, the most recent of which was announced and subsequently launched about a month ago.

Microsoft's more fascinating products out of the new lineup are the slim, flash memory-based devices. These new Zunes will come in several colors and memory capacities, with a 4-gigabyte version selling for $150 and an 8-gigabyte version running at $200. These are the exact same price point Apple has on its new iPod nano products.

Microsoft is touting the term "Zune" as more than just about the player devices themselves, but is trying to market the brand in a way similar to the iTunes atmosphere most iPod owners use to download music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and other content. Microsoft is doing one thing different, though -- it's adding a "social network" concept to the Zune atmosphere and pushing that concept with built-in wireless internet capability on all new players. Also, the Redmond giant is relaxing some of the song-sharing restrictions that have hampered wireless networking capabilities in the first generation of Zune players released last year. The large question is this: will the Zune ever be able to compete with the iPod, on any level and at any price? Round two is about to begin.

It seemed like a done deal. That is, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) was going to write a check for $400 million to $500 million for a 5% sliver of Facebook.

OK, maybe not.

This week, Microsoft's CEO, Steve Balmer, opined on the matter.

Basically, he confirmed that the company is happy to be an advertiser on Facebook – but dismissed the "everything" else as just speculation. Interestingly enough, he even said that social networks can be "faddish" because of the young audiences. Oh, and he thought Facebook's technology wasn't too tough to replicate.

Keep in mind that Facebook gets a big chunk of its revenues from Microsoft. So, it does make sense that Balmer would use some hard-knuckle negotiation, right? Might as well use the bully-puppet too?

So despite all the chatter, I still think there may be a deal. But for Facebook to get a $10 billion valuation may be wishful thinking. Or so Balmer hopes.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Every year or so, some old roommate or a close friend's fiancee or somebody drags me onto yet another social networking site like a kid pulled off the bleachers at a middle school dance. This year, it was the very popular Facebook, one of the web's hottest private properties, which Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has appraised somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 billion clams.

From my charming, handsome Facebook profile, you can get a pretty solid idea of my consumer habits, or at least the habits of the consumer I want you to think I am (Do I secretly love Nicholas Sparks novels? Do I burn through fungal creams? I'll never te-- I mean NO! No. Of course not!). I spill all my beans -- what I do with my free time, what books I read, what CDs I dig on, what TV shows I'd TiVo ... if I had a TiVo ... or a television. And I've never been private about it. Through the MySpaces and the Friendsters -- even ten years ago on my HotWired.com member page (remember these?) -- all that choice information has always been there since the beginning.

And, lucky me, so has the University of Phoenix. Why, when I log on to Facebook in the year 2007, is glorious old UoP still hassling me to go get my GED or whatever learn-at-home hustle it's running, particularly when the actual, genuine university that graduated me way back when is right there on the page, pulsing in Carolina blue beneath my favorite hilarious and insightful quotes?

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) is releasing a major upgrade to its search engine technology. The company calls the new version an improvement, but only time can tell whether that is accurate. According to the FT the product promises "more relevant answers to queries and integrates audio, video and photos into its results pages." Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Ask.com have also released similar upgrades to their search products.

Yahoo! almost certainly spent a huge sum of money and precious engineering resources to bring the new product to market, but the company is in the unenviable position of launching a new version of its technology that is not likely to get it any additional marketshare. In other words, the company is running hard to stay in place.

It may be notable that the Yahoo! search improvement comes after those from Microsoft and Ask.com. It is a sign that being first to market in the most profitable part of the internet business is no longer prized because of Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) huge lead.

For beaten down Yahoo!, a better mouse trap is not terribly valuable if there are no mice to catch.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.