Google Spends More on Acquisitions Than Top 5 Rivals Combined

With its $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest this week, Google has spent a total of $17 billion buying other companies over the last two years, which is more than the company's top five rivals combined, according to Bloomberg.

Crunching the numbers, Bloomberg found Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and Yahoo spent a combined $13 billion acquiring companies during the same period

Microsoft was Google's biggest rival in spending, with deals totaling about $9 billion — $7.4 billion of which was for the pending Nokia acquisition. Another $1.2 billion was for Yammer, the B2B social media provider. Facebook's biggest deal was $700 million for Instagram in September 2012; it was worth $1 billion when Facebook agreed to acquire the company in April. Read more...