Google Inc. spends more than its top five rivals on acquisitions

Google Inc. is currently spending more money than five of its most serious competitors in the U.S. combined. The company is trying to occupy some new markets, because its growth in Web advertising industry has become slower.

This week the company made an official announcement that it is going to acquire Nest Labs Inc. in a 3.2-billion-dollar deal. Including this deal, the company has spent more than 17 billion dollars on hardware, software and advertising-technology companies acquisitions. Less than 13 billion dollars in total were spent by Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. on companies purchases over the same period of time.

The spending war becomes more fierce than ever and is mostly in cash instead of stock. Google Inc. is constantly trying to expand its reach and find the person needed to help the company penetrate into areas such as smartphones and Web-enabled gadgets.

The Internet search business of the company has helped it generate billion-dollar profits each quarter, while it has been on top of the list and has dominated the niche. Now Google is trying to generate revenue from other sources. One of the analysts working for B. Riley & Co. – Sameet Sinha – commented the situation in an interview: “Theyre looking at whats next. Theyre saying were going to keep our cash from acquisitions.”

Leslie Miller, who is a spokeswoman of Google Inc., refused to make any comments.

The companys cash and equivalents increased to 56.6 billion dollars, which is 24% more compared to the ones from the third quarter of 2012. The net revenue of Google increased by 5.2 % to 11.0 billion dollars.

The last years revenue growth of the company slowed, and analysts expect it to do so again in 2014 due to the online activity shifts from personal computers to smartphones, tablets and other connected devices.

According to CNN Money, the current share price of Google Inc. is 2.35% up, and its one-year return rate is 2.56% up. The 40 analysts offering 12-month price forecasts for Google Inc. have a median target of 1,125.00, with a high estimate of 1,313.00 and a low estimate of 850.00. The median estimate represents a -2.12% decrease from the last price of 1,149.40.