Google racked up 40 acquisitions for $1.6 billion through the first three quarters of 2010

Google racked up 40 acquisitions for $1.6 billion through the first three quarters of 2010, a frenetic pace of more than four per month that recalled the buying binges of Cisco Systems in its M&A heyday.
The search engine, which revealed the numbers in a 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Oct. 29, shelled out $983 million of its M&A spend on three companies for talent and technology.
Google said it bought 37 other acquisitions for approximately $626 million in cash through Sept. 30.
The three large buys included mobile ad provider AdMob ($681 million); social software maker Slide ($179 million) and video software maker On2 Technologies ($123 million).
The bulk of the deals, which eWEEK profiled here, included mostly smaller talent acquisitions related to social software, where Google is facing a very real threat to its Internet dominance from Facebook. The social network has 500 million-plus users.
Google bought social search provider Aardvark, widget maker LabPixies, virtual currency specialist Jambool, social aggregator Angstro and gaming provider SocialDeck. Google also reportedly invested $100 million in social gaming power Zynga.
There were dozens more, covering all manners of Internet technologies from security (reCaptcha) to mobile e-mail (reMail) to virtual map technology (Quiksee).

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