IS the dot-com bubble reinflating?

Last week, a relatively obscure Wall Street analyst named Safa Rashtchy, from Piper Jaffray, became an overnight sensation among the Internet faithful. He predicted that Google's stock price, which has climbed more than 350 percent since its initial public offering in 2004, and was $422.52 at the time, would hit $600 a share by the end of 2006.

Mr. Rashtchy's bold forecast recalls memories of the time in 1998 that Henry Blodget, then a young, unknown analyst at CIBC Oppenheimer, predicted that Amazon.com would hit $400 a share. At the time, Amazon stock traded at $242.75 a share; after Mr. Blodget's prognostication, the stock jumped to more than $600.

Of course, the story did not end well for Mr. Blodget: Amazon's stock eventually fell back to earth (today, it is trading at around $288, after accounting for splits) and Mr. Blodget himself, who had been hired away by Merrill Lynch with a seven-figure salary after his seemingly prescient call, was barred from working in the securities industry when it emerged that he had touted other companies that were also clients of the firm.

No one is suggesting that Mr. Rashtchy is involved in any chicanery, but his prophecy does raise the question of whether analysts and investors have once again become irrationally gaga over the Internet, and Google in particular.