And now, they're nomming Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.

That New York Times article mentions some of Google's acquisitions. The 5 biggest:

— DoubleClick Inc. (2008). Google bought the provider of online advertising services for $3.2 billion to help it provide more dynamic, multimedia ads besides the short text links that appear next to its search results.

— YouTube Inc. (2006). Google's $1.76 billion acquisition of the online video sharing site turned out to be a good bet. The site once known mainly for pirated material and home videos of kittens has become an entertainment destination on the Internet.

— AdMob Inc. (2010). Google paid $681 million in stock to buy this mobile advertising service provider in a move to push ahead in this fast-growing market.

— ITA Software Inc. (2011). The $676 million purchase of this airline fare tracker helped Google muscle into the online travel market, though it had to make big concessions in order to clear regulatory hurdles.

— Postini Inc. (2007). Google bought the email security company for $546 million to beef up the security and storage products it offers to businesses.

Note that there are many companies Google has acquired for amounts it does not have to disclose.

What strikes me most is that the big acquisitions for Google are still few and far between.

Which makes this Motorola acquisition a Big Deal.

Bigger than all their other acquisitions combined.

Unfortunately, they didn't buy mine. :-) Don't forget the single most important bang for the buck they got from Urchin, aka Google Analytics. Of course there's my emotional favorite, Angstro!