Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is one company that has been growing and expanding at an exponential rate ever since the 1990s and credit goes to the numerous acquisitions the company had made over the years and is still making. According to market analysts, Google Inc. has made acquisitions worth $24.5 billion in total ever since 1998 (the year of Google Inc.’s conception), with the most expensive acquisition being that of Motorola, which was worth $12.5 billion.
Google Inc. has shown great progress over the years. The corporation started out as just a search engine, a very successful search engine as a matter of fact. It then rose to fame when it launched the Android OS in 2008, expanding its business to enter the smartphone industry. Now, Google seems to be a part of everything that is remotely connected to the internet, and hence, to expand its business, the company only needs to expand the number of users that are on the internet all over the world.
However, acquisitions make up a huge part of the company’s strategy, and, according to industry experts, have proved fruitful (and essential) to its steady growth. Let’s look at the numerous acquisitions Google Inc. has made over the years, to assess the influence all those acquisitions have had on the growth of the company.
Google’s biggest acquisition, Motorola, was made back in 2011 for a whopping $12.5 billion, mostly due to the fact that Motorola held on to a lot of patents that Google Inc. deeply craved. Two years down, in 2013, the same company was sold by Google Inc. for a dismal $2.91 billion to Lenovo, as the company had become highly problematic for Google Inc. to manage.
According to a purely financial outlook, this may be termed as a huge loss for Google, amounting to a little under $10 billion. However, industry experts are of the opinion that the value of all the patents that Motorola originally owned, that Google Inc. still holds on to even after selling Motorola, is much more than the financial loss that the company has made. Hence, in the overall picture, the loss is not a loss, but a major gain for Google Inc., and contributes immensely to its overall growth.
NestLabs is the second biggest acquisition for Google Inc. in history, which the company made in 2014. The company deals in smoke detectors and home thermostats, and is an unlikely choice for Google Inc. However, with Google working on driverless cars and balloon internet services, this seems apt in Google’s plans to get involved in all things that affect users in their everyday lives.
The third biggest acquisition for Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has been DoubleClick, which the company made back in 2007. Purchasing DoubleClick has been a very fruitful venture for the company, as the latter was a well-established business in internet advertising. This is also the beginning of the ad business for Google, as the company also acquired the software that DoubleClick operated with.
Some other notable mentions in this category are YouTube, Waze, and AdMob, which google acquired for $1.65 billion, $966 million, and $750 million, respectively.