Mergers & Acquisitions

"It's very hard to refine, develop, and build upon technical insights. Fortunately, we are smart enough to realize that we aren’t that smart and that many great technical insights are being developed by people who don’t work for Google. This has led us to acquire a lot of companies, and along the way, we discovered that our mergers and acquisitions process, and a meeting called “deal review,” is in itself a critical tool to test the insights of our product strategies against the best companies emerging in the field. 

At the M&A meetings the team introduces the company and covers its financial metrics. Then we spend the balance of the time looking at the product drivers behind the acquisition. Do we have the right insights, or has the market or technology shifted in some fundamental way? Have we set the right milestone for ourselves? Are we executive successfully? Is there a better way to achieve our objectives?"