Google Spends More on Acquisitions Than Top 5 Rivals Combined

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By Todd Wasserman2014-01-15 15:45:40 UTC

With its $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest this week, Google has spent a total of $17 billion buying other companies over the last two years, which is more than the company's top five rivals combined, according to Bloomberg.

Crunching the numbers, Bloomberg found Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and Yahoo spent a combined $13 billion acquiring companies during the same period.

See also: Google Is Eating Apple's Lunch

Microsoft was Google's biggest rival in spending, with deals totaling about $9 billion — $7.4 billion of which was for the pending Nokia acquisition. Another $1.2 billion was for Yammer, the B2B social media provider. Facebook's biggest deal was $700 million for Instagram in September 2012; it was worth $1 billion when Facebook agreed to acquire the company in April.

The company also reportedly offered to buy Snapchat for $3 billion, but was rebuffed. Amazon's only notable purchase was around $700 million for robotics firm Kiva. Yahoo's biggest acquisition was $1.1 billion for Tumblr, though the company has made more than 20 acquisitions of small startups during that time.

Apple, meanwhile, spent less than $1 billion buying other companies during the period even though it has about $147 billion in cash on hand. Google's cash and equivalents rose 24% to $56.5 billion in the third quarter vs. the year ago period while its revenues jumped 5.2%.

Google's spending spree comes as the company's core business — advertising — is being threatened by a consumer switch to mobile devices, which provide lower CPMs (cost per thousand user) rates than desktop.

Image: Getty/Adam Berry

Topics: Advertising, amazon, apple, Business, instagram, Microsoft, Nest, Nokia, snapchat, tumblr, Yahoo, yammer