Google's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola will be its biggest acquisition ever - more than four times the size of DoubleClick, the previous leader.
But over the last decade, Google has been one of the biggest-and most successful-acquirers in the tech industry, and owes a lot of its success to these smart buys. Its core search advertising platform and most of its biggest new businesses, including Android, YouTube, and display advertising, all come from other companies.
Here's Google's top 16 acquisitions by value and show what happened to them.
Last October, Google MA chief David Lawee called the 2005 acquisition of Android-the mobile phone platform started by ex-Danger leader Andy Rubin-its "best deal ever." Less than three years after launch, it has become the most popular smartphone platform in the world.
Google paid about $50 million for social search QA service Aardvark in February 2010, but hasn't really done much with it yet. However, there are hints in Google+ code that suggest that Aardvark - or what's left of it - will soon be integrated into Google's new social network.
Google bought this mobile-payment platform in August 2010. Onlookers assumed it would be part of Google's social networking efforts. In fact, the team was put to work on in-app payments, and earlier this month Google said it would shut down the Jambool Social Gold service in May, and replace it with its own in-app payment system.
Google bought this ad technology company last June, making its 24-year-old founder Nat Turner a young millionaire. Invite is a demand-side platform (DSP), which helps ad buyers place their wares on ad exchanges, and hasn't yet been integrated into Google's other ad-buying products. Google recently wrote a blog post explaining when advertisers should use Invite versus the Google Display Network.
In Jue 2007, Google paid $100 million for this company, which creates tools for advertisers and users to manage RSS feeds. It's still around, but RSS has become less interesting in the wake of Twitter - which is now run by former Feedburner founder Dick Costolo.
Google bought this visual search company last summer, and put the team to work building a search vertical for women's fashion called Boutiques.com.
David Lawee may think Android is Google's best acquisition, but from a pure ROI perspective it's hard to beat Applied Semantics, which built AdSense - the paid search advertising platform that's still responsible for most of Google's revenue and profits.
This one was a mistake: in 2006, Google paid $102 million for this platform for automatic placement of radio ads, and offered a whopping guarantee of up to $1.1 billion based on performance. But the business never took off, and Google shut the program down in mid-2009.
Google tried to buy this video compression company for $106 million, but its shareholders held out for a higher price and eventually got $133 million in January 2010. Last summer, Google announced it would open-source the VP8 video codec it acquired with On2, and rename it WebM. Google has since tried to push WebM as a replacement for H.264, a much more widely used standard for Web video.
Google bought the social gaming company behind SuperPoke last August for $228 million (the price was originally reported at $182 million). Slide still operates as a separate entity within Google, and doesn't seem to be contributing much to Google+, the company's new social networking initiative. Instead, it's out there creating standalone mobile products like photo-sharing app Photovine .
Google announced plans to buy Admeld in June to boost its display advertising business. Regulators announced last month that they're taking a close look at the deal, but that doesn't mean it will be blocked - regulators also took a second look at ITA and DoubleClick, and both of those deals eventually closed.
Google bought this company in June 2007 and integrated its add-on email services, like spam-blocking and archiving, into Gmail for business users. It's been a critical part of Google's enterprise apps business ever since.
Google made a $700 million bid for ITA, which compiles flight information for airlines, travel agencies - and rival search engines. The bid garnered complaints from competitors who rely on ITA's service, but the feds eventually approved it with conditions.
Android is all about increasing mobile search usage today, but Google hopes to make mobile advertising in general into a huge business. That's why it paid $750 million for AdMob in November 2009. Since then, however, AdMob execs have left - including former CEO Omar Hamoui (pictured here) - and sources have said the integration isn't going so well .
It looks like a no-brainer now, but when Google bought the video-sharing service in 2009, it was a huge risk: YouTube was full of
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