Google: Companies it has purchased in the past; who will it purchase next??

According to Kuro5hin, Google is on the verge of buying more companies. The author, Andrevan, postulates on which companies might be next in the Google shopping spree.

In the past, Google has tended to buy small Internet companies in niche markets. Some of them included an advertising company, shopping portal company, search startup company, a photo-organizer company, and quite a few digital mapping companies (maybe to help them in their plan to create 3-D maps of different cities?)

Andrevan hypothesizes on the next companies which Google will acquire. The list is pretty long so here are a few excerpts:

• Technorati: This company is a blog portal and is said to provide more cutting edge search results than the average search engine. It is compared to bloglines which was recently purchased by Ask Jeeves.
• Gurunet (Answers.com): Answers.com features a vast amount of information (think of an encyclopedia) and could help improve Google’s Q & A section.
• Propel: This company speeds up browser capability. It could help improve Google’s Web accelerator, which apparently has been having difficulties.

For a complete list, be sure to check out Andrevan’s article!

Yahoo has also been busy purchasing companies, among them is blo.gs which allows you to keep an eye on your favorite blog feeds. Yahoo also recently purchased DialPad, a net phone services company. Maybe Google will follow suit and buy competing companies which offer similar services?

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