Google's stepping up -- probably past Microsoft soon! It's interesting how it initially came leaning toward open source approach and turned commerical --- now whopping $2 billion within an hour.

Google founders make $2 billion each in an hour

Google shareholders had to be thrilled by the stock market's reaction to the company's first-quarter earnings report on Thursday afternoon.

And nobody could have been happier than Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Each saw the value of his stake jump about $2.2 billion in less than an hour as the stock jumped 17% to $526.50.

The stock took off after the company beat Wall Street estimates on revenue, net income and earnings per share for the first quarter and crushed just about all concerns that Google's business might be peaking. 

At the end of the day, Page's 29.1-million share stake jumped in value from $13.1 billion to $15.3 billion. Brin's 28.6 million shares jumped in value from $12.9 billion to $15.1 billion.

While Page and Brin, who started Google while they were students at Stanford, are no doubt happy at their gains, they've also endured some real pain from the stock market's wild volatility in the last five months. Each man saw the value of his stake drop more than $9 billion as Google shares tumbled nearly 44% from a $732.94 closing high in November to a low of $413.62 in March.

Thursday's gains were worth a touch less than 24% of what they'd lost. 

Addendum: This is to bring the numbers up to date with Friday's close. Google jumped 20% to $539.41.

So, in 24 hours, Page's stake jumped up in value by $2.62 billion. Brin's net worth went up $2.57 billion.

And I should note that CEO Eric Schmidt's holdings in Google grew from $4.81 billion to $5.77 billion, a gain of some $961 million in a day.

Source: http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2008/04/17/google-founders-made-2-billion-each-in-an-hour.aspx