Google’s 2011 acquisition tally: $2B for 79 companies, head count up 33 percent

9to5 Staff | Jan 27 2012 - 9:37 am PT

As 9to5Google reported last October, the search Goliath appears to be on a spending spree since 2011. Having reported holiday quarter earnings, the company filed its 10-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday. The document, available online at the agency’s website, specifies that Google spent $1.9 billion dollars acquiring 79 companies throughout last year.

The sum includes cash and stock and is nearly double the $1 billion they spent on 48 acquisitions in the previous year. For the entire 2011, the number of full-time employees at the company ballooned 33 percent to 32,467 Googlers. Just do not count on the company satisfying its appetite for acquisitions anytime soon, as the filing reads:

Acquisitions will also remain an important component of our strategy and use of capital, and we expect our current pace of acquisitions to continue.

So, has Google put its acquisition money to good use?

Some of the acquisitions include a $700 million purchase of travel data company ITA Software Inc., restaurant review guide maker Zagat for $151 million, German-based DailyDeal for $114 million, Dealmap for an unknown sum, real-time bidding platform Admeld for $400 million, and more. The 10-K filing excludes the $12.5 billion for the Motorola Mobility consumption, which is pending customary regulatory approval. In case the deal fails to go through, a reverse termination fee of $2.5 billion was agreed. Motorola suffered losses due to shrinking sales of its handsets during the holiday quarter. CEO Sanjay Jha is hoping that the Google deal will be finalized in early 2012. Google said it plans to run Motorola Mobility as an independent company.