Google was founded in 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It was incorporated on September 4, 1998, but it celebrates its official birthday on September 27, to mark the day it indexed a record number of searched pages. Since its inception, Google has grown to become one of the five biggest tech giants in the world. While its search engine remains its flagship product, Google has expanded its presence to smartphones, navigation, home products, mobile operating systems, and more recently, artificial intelligence. It has done this by craftily acquiring small businesses and startups and nurturing them into becoming colossal projects in their fields. In this article, we bring you the top 7 companies acquired by Google over the years.
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In This Article
Fitbit
Fitbit was one of the first fitness bands to break into the mainstream and immediately became synonymous with smart wearables. Google acquired the company in January 2021 for $2.1 billion. Google still releases Fitbit products but also uses its technology to power Pixel wearables. The two brands coexist under the Google banner for now. It’ll be interesting to see whether Google uses Fitbit to exclusively release fitness trackers and wristbands, leaving the smartwatch catalogue for the more premium Pixel monicker. We wouldn’t be surprised if the tech giant discontinues all Fitbit products entirely.
Nest
Google’s home tech hub, Nest, started out as ‘Nest Labs’, a project established in 2010 by ex-Apple employees. Nest Labs was a new take on the home thermostat, integrating smart home controls and expanding connectivity via WiFi. Google acquired the company in January 2014 for $3.2 billion. Now, Google Nest consists of a line of smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, thermostats, routers, doorbells, smoke detectors, and more.
Android
The most popular mobile operating system in the world is owned by Google. But what many people don’t know is that it wasn’t developed by Google. Android Inc. was formed in 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. The initial goal of the company was to create an operating system for digital cameras. This soon changed to creating an operating system for touchscreen phones as it catered to a wider audience. Google acquired the company in 2005 for $50 million – an amount that would prove to be meagre in the following decades. As of 2024, Android commands a 71.65% market share of mobile operating systems worldwide.
Waze
Waze emerged as a rival to Google Maps in 2008 and was acquired by the tech giant in 2013 for $966 million. Waze focuses on real-time traffic, providing drivers with faster routes to their destinations. After its acquisition, Waze’s traffic update tech was incorporated into Google Maps. Waze still exists as a standalone app and is often a testing ground for features that later make it to Google’s flagship navigation app. Currently, it has over 140 million monthly active users compared to Google Maps’ 1 billion.
YouTube
The biggest video-sharing platform in the world, YouTube, was not developed by Googe but was rather acquired by the company in 2006 for $1.6 billion. For a platform that had been active only for a year, this was a hefty price. However, it was one of the fastest-growing platforms in the world, boasting around 20 million monthly active users at the time – dwarfing the competition in Google Video. YouTube’s popularity has increased exponentially over time. The platform now attracts 2.49 billion monthly active users.
DeepMind
Before Gemini there was DeepMind. The artificial intelligence company was acquired by Google in January 2014 for a reported $400 million. DeepMind focused on training neural network models to play board games like Go. The program was termed AlphaGo. In 2016, DeepMind made the headlines by defeating the Go world champion Lee Seedol in a five-game match. Now, Google uses DeepMind in a lot of its smart systems, including Android’s adaptive battery feature. The neural engine also finds use in predicting the traffic patterns in Google Maps and curating personalised app recommendations in the Google Play Store.
DoubleClick
DoubleClick is an online advertising firm that predates Google. The company was founded in 1995 and acquired by Google in 2008 for a whopping $3.1 billion. At the time of acquisition, DoubleClick already had brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, General Motors, Nike, Apple, Carlsberg, and more as a part of its clientele. A decade after acquiring DoubleClick, Google rebranded it to ‘AdWords’. It is now used by advertisers to publish their ads on online spaces and optimise their search campaigns.
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Conclusion
These are the top acquisitions that Google has made over the years. Most of the companies in this list have either grown exponentially over the years or bolstered an existing Google product or service by integrating into it. Which is your favourite Google product or service? Let us know in the comments!
