Google after the bell for 6-12-06: A small soft-launch with a big impact

Google had a pretty good day in the market today, with GOOG shares rising quite a bit to close at $402.13, a semi-meteoric rise of $14.96 per share or 3.86%. Whoa -- what happened to cause the runup? Beats me -- there were no earth-shattering announcements today, right? Except for this little nugget about a CPA advertising ValueClick-killer about to be unleased by our Google friends. Make no mistake about it, folks, Google appears to be in the midst of launching a cost-per-action advertising affiliate network that'll probably be unrivaled in reach, anywhere.

On the other hand, while it's interesting to see that Google's ultra-famous search result customer relevancy is seemingly controlled by an expert (or a small group of experts?), it's incredibly hard to believe that search relevancy is not controlled by a globally-centralized and connected team of artificial intelligence experts more than anyone.

There are about as many questions for Google to answer in order for its unsightly market valuation to be justified -- and the laundry list is pretty meaty. As a GOOG investor, what are your thoughts? Is the rapid-fire pace of Google product launches and the media attention on Google being some sort of "Microsoft-killer" enough to make you scream to the hills? Are all these new Google services really adding value to the customer marketplace, and what are the specific ways Google plans on monetizing these services?

Google has so many things working right for them at the moment, but they have just as many looming scenarios and questions to deal with that perhaps a collision is about to take place and a correction with GOOG is looming somewhere on the horizon. What do you think?