Google AdMob buyout latest in long line of acquisitions

"So we'll be applying the technology within Google not only to increase fraud and spam protection for Google products but also to improve our books and newspaper scanning process," read a post in Google's official blog authored by Luis von Ahn, cofounder of reCAPTCHA, and Will Cathcart, a Google product manager.

Entering the wayback machine, Google’s first public buyout was announced in February of 2001, about three years after the company started. Target No. 1 was Deja.com’s Usenet Discussion Service, including the domain names déjà.com and dejanews.com. Now those domain names take you to Google Groups, where you can create and partake in online discussion groups.

Among the company’s more interesting deals, which have expanded the company far beyond search, include 2003’s buyout of Pyra Labs (Blogger’s creator) and 2004’s purchase of Keyhole, whose technology now powers Google Earth. In 2006, Google bought a company called Writely, a word processing software maker whose technology became the basis for Google Docs, which is now said to be used widely in 1 in 5 workplaces. Google says it bought Postini in 2007 to bolster security around offerings like Google Docs that it was looking to infiltrate businesses with.

While many of Google’s buyouts have been relatively small, it has hit $1 billion a few times, including for a chunk of AOL and for online advertising company DoubleClick ($3.1 billion).

Many of Google’s newer products have either emerged from the company’s acquisitions or at least have benefited from them. Google Voice, for instance, is based on technology from Grand Central, which Google gobbled up in 2007 for $45 million.