<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"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.\nCrunching the numbers, Bloomberg found Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and Yahoo spent a combined $13 billion acquiring companies during the same period.\nSee also: Google Is Eating Apple's Lunch\nMicrosoft was Google's biggest rival in spending, with deals totaling about $9 billion \u2014 $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.\nThe company also reportedly offered to buy Snapchat for $3 billion, but was rebuffed. Amazon's only notable purchase was around $700 million for robotics firm Kiva. Yahoo's biggest acquisition was $1.1 billion for Tumblr, though the company has made more than 20 acquisitions of small startups during that time.\nApple, meanwhile, spent less than $1 billion buying other companies during the period even though it has about $147 billion in cash on hand. Google's cash and equivalents rose 24% to $56.5 billion in the third quarter vs. the year ago period while its revenues jumped 5.2%.\nGoogle's spending spree comes as the company's core business \u2014 advertising \u2014 is being threatened by a consumer switch to mobile devices, which provide lower CPMs (cost per thousand user) rates than desktop.\nBONUS: Google Glass From the '90s\n\nImage: Mashable composite. iStock,\u00A0suberve"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/01/15/google-acquisitions-17-billion/>