Google Important Acquisitions

Google has spent more than $28 Billion on a whooping 163 companies since 2001. That is almost one company one month. The search Engine could have purchased all kinds of companies, service, and technologies from mapping companies to security services to gadgets and robots to gaming and facial recognition software and much more. With so many acquisitions, let us look at acquisitions, which have influenced Google business.

Google first invested in Green Energy startup before it completed its purchase of Makani Power in May 2014. This acquisition cost Google $30 Million. Makani has operated out of Google X Labs to build airborne wild turbines, which have the potential to be the dominant form of clean energy. Google purchased Zagat in September 2011 in $151 Million. It was mostly about getting the company’s content into Google services including search, Maps, and Earth. Google purchased Mexico based Titan Aerospace Company that made solar-powered flying drones in April for $60 Million. It can contribute to the Google Maps and Earth or even work with Makani Power Project. It is also playing a big role in Google project Loon, which strives to bring Internet connectivity to those regions without it beaming broadband from the sky.

In March 2013, Google purchased Toronto based DNNreserach Inc. to continue researching its experimental neural network. Google neural network proved it could identify the hundreds of millions of street and house numbers to help its Google street view users with location and navigation. It was purchased in $5 Million. Google wants to organize the world’s data and multimedia. For this, Google acquired DeepMind Technologies in January for $650 Million. It gives computers corresponding perception capabilities so machines can do things like listen music and soundtracks and build their perceptions. Google purchased Boston Dynamics in $500 Million. It used to make mobile research robots for the pentagon but now they are making robots for Google. Boston dynamics also made drones for Amazon. Google purchased GPS and navigation making company Waze for $996 Million last June. Google has vastly improved its real time mapping data about road conditions, closures, and accidents.

Google buys Nest labs in January last year for $3.2 Billion with a plan to bring Android to living room. Name of the project was “Android@home.” Nests made two home products, a thermostat, and a smoke detector. Google purchased Double Click in March 2008 for $3.1 Billion. Double Click has been a source of income for Google, developing and serving its ad services to customers like Apple, Coca-cola, and Nike. Google purchased world’s largest video sharing site YouTube in $1.65 Billion. It is the number three website in US and globally on which users upload 100 hours of new video content every minute. Google best deal ever was to buy Andy Rubins Android in $50 Billion. It was purchased in 2006 and is the most used smartphone operating system in the world.

These days Android, it is empowering in car systems, games, televisions, tablets, and wearable devices. These were the most important acquisition of Google. Recently, they purchased Jetpac, Emu, and Directr Inc. Most of the Google purchases are startups, which can add value to Google business and empower world with something new.