How much is social worth to Google? Investors added $20 billion to Google’s market cap the first week after the launch of Google+ on June 28. A Morgan Stanley downgrade on Friday, brought the total down to $15.8 billion because of doubts whether Google will indeed be able to capitalize on new products such as Google+. But somewhere in between there, give or take a few billion, is how much more the market thinks Google is worth than before the launch of Google+.

On June 27 (the day before the announcement), the stock closed at $482.80. It rose to a high of $546.60 on July 7, for a $20.6 billion gain to its market cap (with 322.25 million shares outstanding). Then the stock dropped to $532 at Friday’s close.

Of course there are other factors at play here (the health of Google’s core search business, the overall market, etc.). In the past week, however, the most important new event for Google was it’s latest foray into social. And even though Google+ is still in a limited beta, the market is already rewarding the serious focus on social that it represents.

Bravo, Larry Page. If he can deliver on the promise of social, Morgan Stanley will be tripping over itself to upgrade the stock. Anyone want to guess what will happen to Google’s market cap between now and then?

When Google first made the “stalking-horse” bid on the Nortel patent portfolio in early April, it was all but assumed that they would push hard and win the rights to the patents. They were hardly the only bidder — RIM and Apple were definitely involved — but still, after the DoJ quickly cleared Google to bid, it seemed to many (including many at Google) that they would prevail. Not so.

Instead, Nortel has announced this evening that a consortium has won the bidding at a cash price of $4.5 billion. So who is in this consortium? Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Sony, and others — essentially, it’s everyone but Google, it seems.

Ouch.

This means that over 6,000 patents will now be in the hands of these winners. And that sort of sucks for Google because losing the bidding means that they still control less than 1,000 patents. And that in turn means lawsuits. As in, Google is going to keep getting sued because they are vulnerable. That not good news for Google, but it’s the way it’s going to be. Well, provided the courts approve the bidding results.

The deal is still subject to review by the courts in the U.S. and Canada. And given the companies that “won”, it seems likely that a lengthy review will take place. The Microsoft and Apple winnings are likely to be the most scrutinized, as the two of them stand to gain the most from the auction results. Google has yet to give a statement on the matter, but you can bet they will lobby against the auction results.

Nortel hopes to close the process by Q3 2011. Good luck.

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