Google has been acquiring businesses like mad almost since their birth. Similar companies acquire about 4.7 businesses or products per year while Google is in the staggering range of 6.4 businesses per year. Each point being in the order of about a half million to a billion dollars, 2 points-a-year more is huge. Of course, Microsoft has spent a lot more in acquisitions than Google because they’ve been at it a lot longer, but Google is setting it’s pace early. Consumers hate Microsoft because of their monopolizing ways, but Google is clearly giving them a run for their money.
Google acquired 45 businesses in 7 years = about 6.43 acquisitions per year
Yahoo acquired 52 businesses in 11 years = about 4.73 acquisitions per year
Microsoft acquired 102 businesses in 22 years = about 4.64 acquisitions per year
Another scary idea is that Google’s acquisitions have the potential to be much more accurate than Microsoft’s because Google is in the business of metrics. This accuracy is like a scalar to the number of acquisitions in terms of earning returns. If Google wants to know what company to purchase, they can simply check how many search hits it gets, how many feed hits it gets, how well their online ads are doing, and even how many site hits the target receives if it is using Google Analytics. Not to mention, Google’s page ranks more or less defines how well a web based business is doing — and web based is where Google puts it’s money.
At what point does a company go from acquiring businesses to help it’s customers to being a company that acquires businesses to block and hinder it’s customers? Perhaps once Google starts gobbling up businesses, never to be heard from again, then we should be worried.
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