Barely seven years after it was founded, Internet search engine and advertising company Google is the world's most highly valued media business.

It is now worth more than 44.4 billion pounds, after reaching an all-time high on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York Tuesday, reports the daily Scotsman. It has beaten Time Warner after just 10 months of trading as a public company.

Shares in the company are now worth about 162 pounds - more than three times their original price of 47 pounds in August last year.

Google makes most of its money from the sale of advertising that sits alongside its Internet search results.

Google now puts into shade more traditional media companies, such as Viacom and Walt Disney, which have stock-market capitalisations of between 30 billion pounds and 30.5 billion pounds.

Former Stanford University computer science students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are now multi-millionaires in their early 30s, founded the company in September 1998.

They initially launched the business from a friend's garage after pulling together 550,000 pounds from family, friends and other investors.