Google's Nine Year Shopping Spree, Illustrated
For those that remember when Google Voice was GrandCentral ... Other than missing Like.com's acquisition on August 20th and having the DoubleClick grab plotted when Google revealed its intent to acquire in April 2007 and not when the official acquisition …
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch's illustrated timeline lands one week after Google closed its Like.com purchase on August 20, 2010, adding another data point to a buying pattern that stretches back across the company's history. The chart also corrects its own dating convention: DoubleClick is plotted from April 2007, when Google revealed intent to acquire, rather than the official close.
The timeline is really a study in two tempos. Some deals close fast and stay visible — DoubleClick officially changed hands in March 2008 after the April 2007 announcement. Others sit quiet for years: Google agreed to acquire GrandCentral back in June 2007, but the service only resurfaced as Google Voice in March 2009, nearly two years later. The illustration makes that lag legible in a way individual deal announcements never do.
First-order effects
- Google's 2010 deal flow continues at pace, with Like.com's visual-search and shopping team now inside the company weeks after closing.
- Readers get a single view of how much of modern Google Voice and the display-ad stack originated outside the company — GrandCentral and DoubleClick were both acquisitions, not internal builds.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in display advertising compete against a Google that owns DoubleClick outright, while voice and communications startups now price in the possibility of a long dormancy followed by rebranding rather than a quick product integration.
- Visual-shopping and e-commerce players like Like.com's former competitors face a buyer with search distribution that can fold acquired technology into mainstream results.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Google consolidates its position as the default acquirer of capability in search, ads, and communications — pushing regulators and founders alike to treat a Google offer as both the likeliest exit and a structural concern.
- The GrandCentral-to-Google-Voice lag becomes a template for how big-platform buyers integrate: absorb quietly, ship on the platform's own schedule, and let the brand switch happen years after the deal does.
The trend: Google's growth strategy increasingly runs through acquisition-led expansion — buying capability companies and integrating them on its own multi-year timetable.