Losing $70 per share would really have to sting. No wonder they locked it down.

What it does show is that business is the same for everyone: not all of the rising stars can rise permanently. On the way up, there will be bumps in the road. Once at the top, they need to find something that continues the rise or the plateau will be achieved. Of course, in this case, it was a drastic drop due to a few less than successful ventures.

Even if it fell 150 points put it where it was this past Summer. However, I would say this is why I avoid tech stocks, to volatile for my tastes.

Had 4 shares of GOOG, purchased 2 more at $687 on the drop. The stock might see lower prices in the next 3-6 months but long term this stock will get back up to approaching $800+ in the next 12 months. I'm not too worried about search, Google had a mild quarter for search but coupled with the purchase of Motorola and it's transition,it had a lot to do with the overall bad results. Hurting both profits and greatly hurting profit margins. By next year they should be rolling with Google branded products to a profit, instead of a loss.

I am not a smart investor nor have I ever invested. However, I wanted to know why Apple or Google has never done a split recently. Don't you usually split the stock once it gets past 100 or 200+ level let along 400-600 range. What are the benefits of splitting stock  and what are the downfalls? It seems like these stocks should be split.  The only stock that I know that doesn't split is Berkshire Hathaway.

Motorola was in a bad shapeas a company, but its patents portfolio is very important for Google, particularly for Android.

About advertising: yes, on mobile phones only, with their 3" to 5" screens, it would have been very difficult, but the expanding tablet market makes things better again, thanks to the wider screen space they offer.

This!

Edit: Anyway, stronger competition from MS and others means Google will have to get used to lower profitability than in the initial, unstoppable phase of its growth.

Google are in a similar position to Facebook, if the trend towards tablets and smartphones continues then they have some serious downsides coming unless they can work out some way to monetise ads on small devices, so far everything they have tried has failed miserably.

just hope this isnt the start of somthing bigger, Apple already sued Samsung for copy right infringement it would makes Google's shares fall even lower if Apple was gearing it's self up to sue Google with thier os or nexus device.

Stock splits are at the discretion of the company so they never have to (as you point to the most famous stock that does not).  They split often because it makes them affordable to more investors sometimes driving the price up because of the illusion of affordability.  So, why may you not want that?  Well, perhaps Google and Apple don't want smaller investors to possibily create more voalitility as they are content with their current place.  These are stocks that have shot up past few years and tech stocks have the potential to be voalitile as is so they could be suring up value with long term investors .  They could either or both split in next few years, but I would not bet on it,

Bear in mind, neither is "wrong", just different philosophies of managing stock value.

I just remember keeping track of Microsoft during the 90s when I was young and seeing it split all the time.  If you were an initial investor in Microsoft you would probably be sitting on a lot of shares right now and have a very good return.  I am not even sure where it is sitting at right now but if it can survive the anti trust suits with only a small devaluation of its stock then it is golden.  I might not like Microsoft but it knows how to make money.

If you bought them at IPO, each share would now equate to 288 Shares I think. So you would have made approximately a 400 fold increase in your money at today's price. i.e. if you invested 10k then you would be sitting on about 4 million dollars. Not bad, especially as the stock has done bugger all for the last 10 years. If you had done the same 10k investment at apples IPO you would have about 2.2 million dollars.