The world's most popular internet search engine saw its stock climb as high as $216.80 during the day before pulling back to finish at $205.96.

This closing price saw Google overtake eBay as the biggest internet firm in terms of stock market value.

Google made profits of $204.1m (£108m) in the three months to 31 December.

Shares surge

The results were way ahead of market expectations, and compare with the $27.3m profits the company made in the same period a year earlier.

US SEARCH SHARE Google - 34.7% Yahoo! - 31.9% MSN - 16.3% Time Warner - 9.4% Others - 7.7% Source: comScore

Total turnover for the quarter jumped to $1.03bn from $512.2m, again beating analysts' predictions.

When Google first floated back in August, its shares debuted at $85.