14 DAY TRIAL // Google is opening up its, rather full, wallets again and has started acquiring new companies at an accelerated pace. It now seems that the company is looking to buy about one or two small companies every month, certainly an increase even over its best previous records. For a company with a market cap of $184 billion, making tens of billion in revenue every year, a few tens or even hundreds of millions for acquisitions don't really break the bank. Initially, Google's intentions were misinterpreted as wanting to buy one or two companies in the 'real estate' sector, but it now looks like this isn't the case.
However, Google is apparently very interested in the online real estate sector, as previous moves seem to indicate. Speaking at the Inman Real Estate Connect conference, Google's Sam Sebastian said something to the effect of: "We’re actively looking to acquire one to two small companies a month." This was initially misquoted as "we’re actively looking to acquire one to two small real estate companies a month" leading to some overly optimistic reports on the online real estate market. The first quote, though, is likely the accurate one.
Google was rumored to be interested in acquiring Trulia, a startup with a pretty solid grasp of the online real-estate market, though Sebastian didn't comment on the speculation. The site's deep integration with Google Maps makes it a likely candidate for Google, though, if the company plans to move further into the market as it looks likely to. There are also a lot of smaller players which Google could find valuable.
However, the bigger picture here is Google's increasing ambitions which would be fueled in part by the growing number of small companies it plans to incorporate along with their technology. The giant has interests in a large number of markets at this point and it is constantly entering new ones. For some large projects, it prefers to work internally, like Chrome, Chrome OS or Wave, but there are plenty other where it just takes over an existing service or technology, like it did with Android or YouTube.