NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Google, which filed for one of the most eagerly awaited public offerings in April, appears to be ready to start trading.

The No. 1 Internet search engine said in a statement on its IPO Web site Monday that it's asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to declare the company's registration settlement effective Tuesday afternoon, a move that would appear to pave the way for the company to set a price that evening.

Google said it will begin accepting bids as soon as one hour after the SEC declares the offering to be effective. If so, the company, seeking to raise $3.3 billion through its IPO, could determine the final offering price Tuesday evening and make its debut on the Nasdaq market Wednesday morning.

Potential investors began making their bids for Google stock Friday.

But Tom Taulli, founder of CurrentOfferings.com, an IPO research site, said Google will not necessarily begin trading that soon. He said that once the SEC declares the offering effective, that simply means that Google is legally allowed to start selling shares.

However, Taulli added that Google might want to take advantage of the fact that tech stocks have enjoyed two consecutive days of gains after what has been a brutal summer. The Nasdaq surged nearly 1.5 percent Monday.

"They probably want to sell into strength. If there's enough demand to get it done, they'll want to get it done as fast as possible," Taulli said.

Google's IPO has been one of the most widely anticipated in years. But there have been several stumbling blocks since the company filed to go public in April. (Click on the timeline to the right for more).

Along those lines, Google disclosed in a new filing Monday that the SEC has initiated an informal inquiry into the company's issuance of stock and options to current and former employees. Google indicated earlier this month that it may have violated several state laws by not formally registering these shares.

In addition, the Dutch auction process used to determine the offering price has led to much confusion. Potential investors had to register on a Web site for a 20-digit bidder ID, for example.

And even though the Dutch auction enabled more small investors to get in on the deal than with many of the hot IPOs of the late 1990s, Google set a preliminary price of $108 to $135 for its stock in July, a level which many analysts and money managers called sky-high for the average investor.

For one, it valued Google at a premium to top competitor Yahoo! by some measures. Plus, only a handful of stocks, let alone IPOs, trade above $100, a level that often leads companies to do stock splits.

And if all that wasn't enough, Google's debut comes when tech stocks, and Internet stocks in particular, have been hit by a huge sell-off during the past month and a half.

Market observers said it's difficult to say just yet, without knowing what the final price for Google will be, whether or not the stock will have a favorable debut.

But David Menlow, president of research firm IPOfinancial.com, said that he would be surprised if Google priced the deal below $100 a share, even though he felt that price would be too high to lure the types of small investors that Google had hoped to attract through the auction process.

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"The IPO offering price could be the high price for the year. I don't know who's going to be there supporting it if it's over $100," said Menlow.

Analysts and fund managers have become increasingly skeptical of the stock's near-term prospects lately. There does not appear to be a sense of urgency to buy the stock among many on Wall Street.

Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Janco Partners, said because of the complexities of the auction process, there is a chance that many institutional money managers may sit out the bidding, which could make the stock extremely volatile at the get-go.

"Google may not fall like a knife but in the next several days and weeks, I think there will be some downside to it," said Pyykkonen. "The biggest risk with the auction process is that big institutions may not play it because they aren't able to get enough of it and if you have little institutional business and a lot of retail investors, the reaction will be very unpredictable."

To that end, Henry Hewitt, manager of the Light Revolution fund, said he did not bid for the stock mainly because there was little chance of being able to benefit from a huge one-day pop in the shares.

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"It's going to be hard to hit a home run on Google based on where it's priced," Hewitt said. "If people get carried away on the downside, maybe I would buy it soon but odds are I'll wait and take a position at the end of the year."

What's more, even though the company has strong fundamentals and operates in one of the most lucrative areas of technology, search-based advertising, Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN unit have both intensified their efforts in search as of late.

And there is a growing sense that Google will need to diversify since it is almost entirely dependent on search-based advertising. Yahoo! faced similar criticism when it first went public. But Yahoo!, during the past few years, has impressed Wall Street by building up its portfolio of services that it charges fees for, such as job listings, personal ads and games.

"If paid search weakens for some reason, Google is left with no other bows in their arsenal," said Pyykkonen. "Ultimately Google will have to have a fee business."