San Francisco ? Google Inc.’s stock price surpassed $500 for the first time Tuesday, marking another milestone in a rapid rise that has catapulted the Internet search leader into the corporate elite.

Continuing a recent surge driven by Wall Street’s high expectations for the company, Google’s shares rose $14.60, or nearly 3 percent, to close at $509.65 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

That left Google with a market value of about $156 billion just eight years after former Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin started the business in a Silicon Valley garage.

The Mountain View-based company now ranks as Silicon Valley’s second most valuable business, eclipsing the likes of Intel Corp., the world’s largest computer chip maker, and Hewlett-Packard Co., a high-tech pioneer that also famously started in a garage 67 years ago.

With a market value of about $163 billion, networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. is the only Silicon Valley firm worth more.

Google’s remarkable success has minted Page and Brin, both 33, as multibillionaires along with their hand-picked chief executive, Eric Schmidt.

Google Inc.'s stock price has surpassed 00 for the first time, marking another milestone for the Internet search leader. This photo of the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., was taken in October.

Hundreds of other Google employees are millionaires because so many investors want to own a piece of a company that has become the Internet’s most powerful financial force while building a brand so ingrained in society that it has become part of the English language.

It took slightly more than a year for Google’s shares to travel from $400 to $500 – the stock’s longest journey from one major milestone to the next since the company priced its initial public offering at $85 in August 2004.

The shares topped $100 on their first day of trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, then crossed $200 in less than three months.

The stock broke through $300 another seven months later in June 2005 and then breached $400 on Nov. 17 last year.