The China Times reports Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is planning to unveil own-brand notebooks before the end of 2012 featuring touch screen technology. The report also claims that the company has directly placed all of the orders for hardware for the product’s manufacture, rather than through a partner such as Asus (with whom it makes the Nexus-7 tablet) or Samsung (with whom it makes the Galaxy Nexus tablet).

If reports are true, Google (GOOG) is set to produce a limited run of 20 million units and could start selling the computers by year’s end. Going without the middleman could be a good step for the tech giant as it would allow it to sell products at a slightly cheap rate and to build up its own brand as a hardware manufacturer at the same time. A plan would even more closely support it with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in terms of creating hardware and software.

The Google Chromebook, which has been built by Samsung and Acer, has been gaining popularity since its release two years ago and its two sub-US$250 (RM750) models, both introduced earlier this year, sold out within days after the sale.

Where the stock is moving now?

Shares of Google traded down -1.02% during last trading session, closing at $661.15. The share price of GOOG traded yesterday in a range of $659.02 to $667.00. The company now has a market value of $217.25 billion.

Is current price trend good or bad?

The stock, after recent close, is -6.62% down their SMA 50 and 14.62% off the 52-week high. The worst hit in its 52 week range is $556.52 per share, with $774.38 as its 52 week best price that compares with a latest closing price of $661.15. Its most recent closing price has a distance of -1.15% from SMA20 and is 3.34% up than SMA200.

Now compare performances of this stock in different time periods.

With recent decline, the year-to-date (YTD) performance reflected a 2.36% gain above last year. During the past month the stock dropped -2.82%, bringing three-month performance to -2.31% and six-month performance to +9.52%.

How much risky is this stock?

For this company, beta value at 1.08 represents it is more volatile to the shift in the market. If we take a look on its volatility, 1.46% was seen in a week and for the month it was 1.73%.

Not enough? See what Wall Street analysts think about this company.

For the stock, mean recommendation this week is 2.0. Sharing price target summary; nearly 34 brokerages have a mean PT as $797.56 and median PT of $800.00 while the highest price target set by those rating agencies was $910.00 and lowest PT was $675.00.