Google IPO price per share

I’ve seen several references to the price per share of Google stock being priced too high ($108-135) for people to buy it, most notably in this article by Dan Gillmor:

At least, I wouldn’t consider [investing in Google] at the nosebleed-altitude prices that Google suggested to the world Monday. This is starting to feel frothy.

This is silly. If you buy 74 shares of Google stock for $10,000 and 352 shares of Microsoft stock for $10,000, your stake in each company is worth $10,000 even though you’ve got five times more MSFT shares. A more relevant question to ask is whether or not a company is worth its overall valuation…or better yet, whether it will be worth such and such a value in X number of years. There’s a pyschological factor involved here. People think they’re somehow getting more with a higher share price. Reminds me of stock splits…if a stock splits 2-for-1, you get twice the number of shares (woo hoo, I’m rich!) but at half the price per share (hey, wait a minute…).