Google’s Acquisition Spree

Google Inc. was founded on September 4, 1998 as a private company and is now one of the leading multinational tech company.  It went public in 2004 and remained independent for 17 years. With the recent re-structuring, Google became a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., which now owns most of the parts. Google has been providing a number of services, from Gmail to Android, Google Earth to Google Docs, Google Drive to web browser Google Chrome and what not. 

There is a history of partnerships and acquisitions which has made Google a truly successful technology company. Using the list of all Google acquired companies and kpi dashboard tool we illustrate Google’s acquisition journey.

A To Z List Of Companies Acquired By Google [Now Alphabet]

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We extracted the first letter of every acquired company and plotted them as a simple bar chart. Google indeed has acquired A-Z companies.

 [click to see list of all companies]

Google acquires companies in order to fill gaps in the product line or merge/integrate with their existing product lines.

Let see which companies have been integrated into multiple products and which products have consumed more than one acquired companies/products.

Starting with the largest acquisition

Acquisition of Motorola Mobility

 
The below sankey diagram maps out the complete picture of all the acquired companies and which products/services they have been integrated within Google.

 [click to see interactive version]

Another interactive Circle pack viz showing the number of acquisitions by year and the business category

Top list of acquisitions [based on publicly known figures]

Since 2001, Google has acquired over 180 companies, that’s almost one company per month. It spent $17 billion in last two years only while its top 5 rivals spent $13 billion combined during the same period.

 Google Inc. has spent more than $24.5 billion on its Top 10 acquisitions alone. It has spent more on acquisitions than its top 5 rivals namely, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Yahoo combined.

Here we are going to discuss  Top 3  purchases made by Google Inc.

Motorola Mobility, a mobile device manufacturing company  is the largest acquisition made by Google Inc. till date worth $12.5 billion in 2001. Main reason behind the acquisition was its patents.

NestLabs, producers of smart thermostats and smoke detectors comes second. Google bought it for $3.2 billion in 2014 as it wants to expand its presence in consumer homes.

DoubleClick, internet ad serving service provider is the third biggest acquisition made by Google in 2007 costing $3.1 billion. Reason behind it was to make a prominent presence in the online advertising world.

According to Quarter 2 2015 Results, Google Inc. showed Revenues of $17.7 billion. Whilst its growth revenue being 11% year over year. It also reflected a constant growth in wide range of its products particularly search and mobile businesses. With a strong operating cash flow of $7.0 billion, seems like Google will continue its buying spree in the future.