Google Acquisitions Target Social Apps, Search for Google Me

by Clint Boulton

Google has purchased more than 75 companies since snapping up Deja in February 2001.

Scores.org provides a key that delineates buys between acquisition size, whether it was simply an investment, and whether a buy was made for technology, talent or the market.

After Google acquired TNC in September 2008, the company embarked on nearly a year of belt-tightening. Google opened up the coffers again in August 2009 by agreeing to buy video codec provider On2 Technologies. A bid for ReCaptcha followed in September. ReCaptcha was an open-source CAPTCHA service the company used to boost security and to support its efforts to digitize books and newspapers.

After going O for October, Google bid for three companies: mobile display ad provider AdMob, but the company couldn’t close the deal until May thanks to FTC scrutiny. The others were VOIP platform provider Gizmo5 and ad provider Teracent.

Google closed out 2009 by buying AppJet for the real-time collaboration application EtherPad, which it subsequently released to open source. Google renewed its purchase push in 2010 by buying social search engine Aardvark, which has been shunted to Google Labs.

Google grabbed mobile e-mail app maker ReMail, Picnik for cloud-based photo editing for Picasa and DocVerse for Google Apps.

Google picked up processor maker Agnilux, possibly to boost Chrome OS though the company was quiet about its plans. Google also moved to boost its Google Goggles visual search app by acquiring Plink to cover art recognition. The company also grabbed video platform provider Episodic to help YouTube.

Google in April and May bought some interesting companies. Lab Pixies provides gaming widgets, possibly for Google’s Social Me network. Bump Technologies offers a tablet UI for Android or Chrome OS machines. Global IP Solutions brings real-time voice and video processing. Simplify Media provides cloud music.

Google landed on Invite Media in June to boost its DoubleClick display ads and then moved on ITA Software in July for travel flight information. However, that deal is under DOJ scrutiny, so it is not yet complete. Next was Metaweb for semantic search. A $100 million investment in Zing is geared to forge Google Games.

The company grabbed Web toolkit provider Instantiations, then picked up social widget giant Slide before grabbing Jambool for virtual currency in August. Like.com provides fashion product search.

Scores.org’s infographic was published before Google bought Angstro, a two-man startup with social network expertise, and SocialDeck.

SocialDeck makes social games, adding another weapon for Google.