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Does Google have the drive to buy NAVTEQ?

Google Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOG) hot acquisition spree is setting the web search leader up to be the king of all information dispersal. Sounds like a heavy undertaking, doesn't it? It is, but Google has a multi-billion dollar war chest of cash and earns more every quarter. This company can afford to go nuts in its drive for world domination. Ah. It's good to be king, no?

NAVTEQ Corp. (NYSE: NVT) would make an interesting acquisition for Google's global mapping and navigation efforts. Google Local and Google Maps are already pretty heavily-used devices on computers and mobile phones these days, and Navteq's GPS positioning software products for mobile devices and handheld devices like Palm Treos and BlackBerries would further entrench Google into providing real-time, accurate navigational information to mobile customers, of which there are more than 150 million in the U.S. alone.

When Google says that the "mobile" front will be bigger than the PC front someday (in terms of information retrieval), you have to believe it knows what it's talking about. The sheer amount of mobile devices alone makes the market ripe for business -- and it's literally just getting started. NAVTEQ shares have jumped 20% since last week after Jim Cramer mentioned the company on CNBC in connection with being "Google-icious" (re: a perfect fit for Google), so if the navigation company is indeed acquired by Google, it'll be yet another large win for the search king as it moves fast and furious into mobile information providing and retrieval.

Google's purchase of GreenBorder is interesting fodder

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s acquisition team operates on most days under the radar, as the Web company receives recognition for billion-dollar acquisitions like YouTube and DoubleClick. But there are dozens of other small start-up acquisitions that go unnoticed. Count GreenBorder Technologies among that group, as Google has quietly acquired the company while doing away with its products at the same time. Say what?

GreenBorder makes a security tool that allows the Web browser on your PC to stay mostly isolated from the hijack attempts and bad, malicious software that some website owners want to install on your PC without you knowing. Sure, there are software products that do this already, but the difference is in the way GreenBorder's product actually isolates the browser from the ties into the operating system. Result? A much more secure product.

Why would Google make an acquisition like this? Think about this: Google could not survive without Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). Eek! But it's true -- Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is still, by far, the most-used Web browser on the planet and Google's entire revenue existence resides inside that browser (instead of software installed on your PC). Billions of dollars in Google revenue happen each quarter using Microsoft's Web browser as the enabling conduit (along with other browsers like Firefox, Opera and Apple's Safari). Google has a vested interest in making the browser you use as safe and functional as possible at all times. If not, Google's revenue train comes to a screeching halt.

Yahoo! rushing to buy in wake of Google-YouTube? Or eBay?

As Melly Alazraki mentioned in her post last night, everyone is mourning, alas poor Yahoo!: the real loser in the Google-YouTube deal. And the best defense is a good offense, right? So naturally the lips of investment bankers are wet with the licking. I can just see (in my imagination silly! I don't have spies) the acquisition pitchbooks being pitched left and right all over Terry Semel's desk.

Is Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) buying? And if the company is keeping its fax machines busy with term sheets, who might it buy?

Yahoo!'s never been afraid of a good little acquisition. Hello, Flickr, hello, Facebook.com? Interested parties have mentioned names like Dabble (a sort of online TV Guide, and no, I never heard of it either), Heavy.com (whose co-CEO says that, although he's not selling, he'd of course consider a deal with "a good exit strategy," haha) and our own Tom Taulli's favorite, vMix, whose CEO spoke not a word of acquisition talk in his interview with us.

But Melly makes an excellent point: shouldn't Yahoo! finish Project Panama first? How the heck could the company even monetize an acquisition right now? Maybe eBay should be the one out there buying. Yeah!

I can just hear the investment bankers scurrying back to their PowerPoint files now and doing replace-all for "synergies with" from "Flickr" to "Skype" ...

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Last updated: November 10, 2009: 02:24 PM

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