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By Tom Sheehan
The Google shopping spree continues as they have acquired 57 companies so far in 2011. This is according to a recent SEC filing.
Google thus far spent more than $1.4 billion to purchase the 57 companies and that is up from the company's previous record of 48 acquisitions in 2010.
Google revealed in a 10-Q filing with the SEC that it paid $941 million in cash for three companies including $676 million for flight software provider ITA Software in April, $151 million for restaurant review guide maker Zagat, and $114 million for Daily Deals.
The search company has paid another $502 million on the other 54 companies.
Google also bid in August to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, but that will not close until 2012.
they have also sought recently to bolster its patent portfolio, in an effort to protect products such as its Android mobile phone software from litigation.
In the regulatory filing recently, Google said the fair value of patents and developed technology gained through all of its acquisitions in first nine months of 2011 amounted to $407 million.
Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (MMI) for $12.5 billion, announced in August, is also intended to augment Google's intellectual-property portfolio. The Motorola acquisition is currently under federal antitrust review.
Why buy all of these companies and what's the grand plan? Most of the buys have been cloud-based players that bolster the company's local search, advertising, video and social software services.
The acquisitions help Google Web services including the Google+ social network.
ITA is used by Google Flight Search. Zagat will be used in Google Places for local business search.
Daily Deals, along with loyalty card provider Punchd, coupon provider Zave Networks and daily deals aggregator DealMap will likely be used to fortify the Google Offers deals and Google Wallet mobile payment services.
Google's YouTube bought video producer Next New Networks, which is being used to help fashion new channels on YouTube, as well as Fflick for social sentiment analysis and Green Parrot Pictures for video processing.
Any chance acquisition strategy will slow? Not likely as they still have plenty of cash generated by their search business.
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