Google's Android Investments

Google's Android Investments were expressed earlier this month. Strategic investments by the company include areas in Android, Chrome, YouTube and Enterprise. The efforts are to spur growth and revenues. Google reported strong sales as a result from the consumer demands for content, Google apps and devices.

Google has acquired more than 100 companies to date. The purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion was the company’s largest acquisition. It was reported that the corporation spent US$1.3 billion on acquisitions during the first half of 2013, with US$966 million of that total going to Waze.

According to PWC, Google, ever an active acquirer of both large and small companies, completed over 53 transactions (both acquisitions and purchases of intangible assets) with all, except the Google-Motorola Mobility transaction, undisclosed in terms of deal value. Other active corporate acquirers included Thomson Reuters, Groupon, IBM, and Facebook, all closing multiple deals with undisclosed deal values. Private equity club deals continued to play a role, despite being outpaced by corporate players.

The hardware sector met mixed results, with the volume of transactions declining 15 percent but cumulative deal value increasing by 24 percent without considering the Google-Motorola Mobility deal (cumulative deal value increased 100 percent including Google-Motorola Mobility) according to the report. Acquisitions by Cisco (NDS for $5 billion) and Western Digital (Viviti Technologies for $4.8 billion) helped to keep cumulative value high for the hardware sector. Semiconductor companies showed a lackluster performance in terms of M&A with a mere 8 percent of transaction volume (32 deals) and cumulative deal value of $8.1 billion, a 68 percent drop from 2011.

Technology, more than in any other industry, had real pressure of disruptive innovation causing technology companies constantly to looking for their next competitive differentiator. Some of the strategies technology companies were seeking to gain were investing in areas such as new talent, new technologies, R&D and M&A.