Google shares top USD 800

New York, Feb 19 (AFP) Internet search king Google's shares pushed past USD 800 for the first time today despite a tough new challenge from Microsoft and looming European Union action over alleged privacy violations. Google's shares hit USD 804.00 in early trade on the Nasdaq exchange, pushing the company's market valuation to USD 265 billion, after rising 13 per cent from the beginning of 2013 and 33 per cent over the past 52 weeks. Around 11:00 am (2130 IST) the shares were at USD 801.71, up 1.1 per cent. On January 22 Google reported firm 2012 fourth-quarter gains, with profit up 6.7 per cent from a year earlier at USD 2.89 billion. For the full year Google's earnings grew 10 per cent to USD 10.74 billion, on revenues topping USD 50 billion. Several analysts strengthened their recommendations for the shares with price targets ranging from USD 800 to USD 900, the latter from Cantor Fitzgerald. But the company faces fresh challenges. In a new push for its Outlook email service, Microsoft has launched a negative ad campaign against Google, asking readers if they have been "Scroogled" by Google's use of personal data from users of its Gmail service. "Think Google respects your privacy? Think again," the Microsoft ads say. "Google goes through every Gmail that's sent or received, looking for keywords so they can target Gmail users with paid ads." Microsoft says its Outlook service will not scan emails to target online ads. Yesterday France's CNIL data protection agency said that European data privacy regulators intend to take action against Google after it failed to follow their orders to comply with EU privacy laws. "At the end of a four-month delay accorded to Google to comply with the European data protection directive and to implement effectively (our) recommendations, no answer has been given," said CNIL. National authorities responsible for enforcing data protection laws in the EU said they plan to set up a working group to "coordinate their coercive actions which should be implemented before the summer." (AFP) SAI 02192335 NNNN