Shares of Internet search-engine firm Google Inc. began trading Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Almost 1.7 billion dollars in stock were sold in Google's initial public offering (IPO), valuing the firm at about 23 billion dollars ahead of Thursday's trading. Under the ticker symbol GOOG, the stock started selling at 85 dollars a share and quickly approached 100 dollars a share. The company's Web search engine is the most widely used in the world. The IPO took place after wrangles with government regulators. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission approved the sale late Wednesday. Limited interest from Wall Street investors in the weeks leading up to the launch of trading forced Google to pare back what would have been a more ambitious stock offering that would have raised about 3.5 billion dollars and given the company a market value of about 36 billion dollars. The total shares to be offered were reduced from 26 million to about 20 million, and the opening price was cut to 85 dollars a share from a range earlier projected at 108 dollars to 135 dollars a share. --SP 2046 Local Time 1746 GMT
