Google Investments

Introduction

This report provides an insight of a Google, Inc.'s current investment and project activities. It will include a discussion on some of the primary business areas in which the company operates. Also included will be future investment and project opportunities as well as sources of competitive advantage.

Current Investment and Project Activities

One current investment for Google is that "on August 15, 2011, they entered into an Agreement and Plan of Merger (Merger Agreement) with Motorola, who is a provider of innovative technologies, products and services that enable a range of mobile and wireline digital communication, information and entertainment experiences, under which they will acquire Motorola for $40 per share in cash, or a total of approximately $12.5 billion" (SEC, 2011). They also continue to invest assertively into their systems, data centers, corporate facilities, information technology infrastructure as well as their employees. "As of December 31, 2011, Google's business was focused on areas such as: search, advertising (in which according to their 2011 10-K report, advertising revenues made up 97% of their revenues in 2009 and 96% of their revenues in 2010 and 2011), operating systems and platforms, and enterprise" (SEC, 2011). One current project activity going on for Google right now is the newly developed Android market, which allows users to create applications for mobile devices such as cell phones. The "growth of their Android operating system in 2011 has been impressive and as of January 2012, over 250 million Android devices have been activated globally" (SEC, 2011).

Future Investment and Project Opportunities

Google is pretty determined to power their company with 100% renewable energy by investing in innovative, large-scale clean energy projects. Even thought they have invested in this in the past, they continue to do so now and in the future, with one investment involving the world's largest wind farm located in Oregon taking place right now that is to be completed later in 2012. Future project opportunities include visions of Google's future, which are influenced by the continued development of the internet and increased availability of broadband internet connections. They believe that the "maturation of the internet will allow more and more computing tasks to be performed via web, on computers sitting in data centers, rather than on your desktop. The whole idea of this is called "cloud computing" and is central to Google's business model going forward" (Laudon & Laudon, 2011). Since last year, they have been hard at work on a cloud computing offering that is being said will compete straight on with what is known as the popular Amazon EC2 cloud. Another future project opportunity for Google comes