Google investors will want to take a look at "Google Goes to Market" by Alan Sipress in today's Washington Post. Since going public in 2004, Google has grown by acquisition 15 times in addition to products developed in house. Google management has quietly been buying smaller start-ups offering one or two products that fit somewhere within Google's overall strategic framework of being the go-to place for web searching capabilities and for selling online advertising. Unlike ebay and Yahoo, both of which have spent much more money on acquisitions than Google's $400 million, Google rarely draws attention to its purchases. Four of these purchases, including Zipdash Inc. and Dodgeball.com, have been for technology that offer web-based services to mobile computing devices. It bought dMarc Broadcasting Inc. for its technology to place ads on the radio.
One of Google's coolest products is Google Earth, made possible by several small scale acquisitions including Keyhole Corporation which provides the capability for digital mapping and satellite imaging. Where 2 LLC and @Last Software allow for three dimensional mapping of topological features. Google's latest acquisition is Neven Vision, a company sopecializing in the development of image recognition software. All of Google's acquisitions dovetail with in-house software development projects. Tracking Google's acquisitions allows investors to flesh out Google's strategic business plan for the near future.
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