Google's 10 biggest acquisitions (so far)

The search giant wants to spend $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility. Here are its ten biggest buys to-date and what exactly happened to them.

10. On2 Technologies
10. On2 Technologies
Price: $133 million
Announced: August 2009
FTC Approval: January 2010

On2 Technologies made Theora and VP8, high performance video codecs for online streaming. After the purchase, the Free Software Foundation immediately called for Google to open-source VP8. It had used Adobe Flash for the videos on another notable acquisition -- YouTube.

On2's purchase has proven crucial to Google's video efforts. Google did open-source VP8 that May as a crucial piece of its video format, WebM. YouTube is switching over to WebM for both new videos and its existing catalog, while Google's rival Microsoft has allowed its own new acquisition, Skype, to switch to WebM for all its video calls.


Alex Konrad - Last updated August 16 2011: 12:14 PM ET
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The $12.5 billion acquisition is guaranteed to send shockwaves through the mobile sector. Truth is, both companies need each other badly.

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