Two acquisitions were announced today -- together totaling around $800 million dollars. This comes about a month and a half after Eric Schmidt told us that acquisitions are back on. Both acquisitions are significant -- but one cost a lot more than the other.
AdMob was the the most expensive acquisition -- Google signed an agreement to acquire the company for $750 million dollars. AdMob is an advertising network that has taken root in the mobile app space -- something that Google hasn't done a good job with themselves.
According to their website, they have served over 125 billion ads through the mobile app world. That number looks really good -- how could Google not be interested in this company? There is no word on whether there were any other bidders.
The second acquisition we learned of today was Gizmo5 for $30 million. This service is a lot like Skype -- in fact, it was a target for acquisition by Skype, but that deal fell through recently.
Gizmo5 is a free service that lets you accept or make free phone calls to other Gizmo5 accounts or SIP phones. In addition to the free calls, you can also make cheap outbound calls to real phone numbers.
In addition to the obvious usefulness of this technology with Google Talk, Google may begin allowing people to place outbound calls right from their computer through Google Voice.