Internet goliath Google Inc. will open a research and development facility on Carnegie Mellon University's campus, state economic development and university officials are expected to announce today.

The announcement comes after weeks of speculation that the hip, go-go Google was eyeing Pittsburgh as an eastern outpost.

Google, based in Menlo Park, Calif., is setting up a local shop because it, like a handful of other Silicon Valley firms, wants to be close to CMU and the research talent at its engineering and computer sciences schools, considered among the tops in the country.

Google will join fellow tech behemoths Apple Computer Inc. and Intel Corp. at CMU's new $39 million Collaborative Innovation Center, erected on the slopes of Panther Hollow off Forbes Avenue where the campus starts.

It's not known how many people Google will employ, but the number is not expected to be high.

Google was founded in 1998 by two Stanford University computer science graduate students. Its online search capabilities rapidly became so pervasive that people would say they are going to "Google" someone or something when looking up information on the Internet.

Since going public 11 months ago, Google has continued to defy skeptics. The firm's market value has soared above $100 billion -- eclipsing a long list of business icons -- Coca Cola Co., Pepsico Inc., Time Warner Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Home Depot Inc., among others.

When the company first went public, skeptics believed fierce competition from formidable rivals such as Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. would erode the company's search engine leadership and, ultimately, retard its earnings growth.

But Google has been widening its lead, giving it more opportunities to serve up moneymaking advertising links alongside its search results.

Through October, Google held a 39 percent share of the U.S. market for online search, up from 34.8 percent at the same time last year, according to comScore Networks. Yahoo's share has meanwhile declined to 29.2 percent from 32 percent a year ago and Microsoft's has decreased to 14.6 percent from 15.8 percent last year, comScore said.

That's just one reason most analysts remain optimistic about Google's prospects.

As Google has introduced more intriguing products to complement its search engine, prominent securities analysts such as Benjamin Schachter of UBS Securities and Safa Rashtchy of Piper Jaffray have become convinced the company is bound to become an indispensable hub in a global economy increasingly driven by the Internet.

Google "is a paradigm-changing company," Mr. Schachter wrote in a research report that outlined why he believes the company's shares may soon reach $500.

Since its initial public offering, Google's shares have more than quadrupled from their initial offering price of $85, closing yesterday at $418.96, up $1.47.

Their meteoric rise has evoked memories of the emergence of another high-tech star in the 1980s -- Microsoft Corp., which 16 months after going public, traded at a split-adjusted 30 cents per share -- more than quadrupling from the March 1986 IPO price of 7 cents. Microsoft closed yesterday at $27.09. There are a few notable differences between Microsoft then and Google now.

For one, Microsoft's market value remained below $10 billion 16 months after its IPO, leaving plenty of upside for investors.

On the flip side, Microsoft was nowhere near as profitable as Google is today.

In its first full year as a public company, Microsoft earned $72 million on revenue of $346 million. Adjusted for inflation, that translates into a profit of about $121 million on sales of $582 million. Google is expected to earn about $1.6 billion on revenue of $6 billion this year, quadrupling its profit from 2004.

The impressive earnings growth distinguishes Google from the throng of unprofitable dot.coms with stocks that soared during 1999 and 2000, only to crash after investors concluded the valuations were based on goofy math.

"Google's value is based on reality," said Stanford Financial Group analyst Clayton Moran. "It's not based on the number of eyeballs looking at its Web page or other bubble metrics."