> There's Android, YouTube, 510 Systems, and the constellation of acquisitions made to create Google Apps, at a minimum.

Buying Android hardly would have triggered anti-trust investigations given Apple's significant market share at the time, and the many other significant competitors (BlackBerry and Nokia just to name two).

Same goes with YouTube - Google bought it before it was a smash success, and before people thought that sort of thing would be a major viewership center.

510 Systems and their self driving car really still isn't a money-making center for Google (nor is self-driving technology for anyone at the moment).

Google Apps is a hard sale against Office 365, etc...

I just don't see how any one of these acquisitions, on their own, would have caused government Anti-Trust inquiries... unless your point is Google operates in too many different markets?

nit: Android was purchased long before Apple entered the market. Doesn't change your argument, no one was expecting vendors to rush to a new OS because of the iPhone revolution.

But Google was already aware of the iPhone the time they purchased Android. This has been their strategy for competition.

As others have pointed out, Google bought Android long before Apple released the iPhone.

Even after Apple did release the iPhone, the strategy behind Android was entirely focused on competing with Microsoft, not Apple. Google was terrified that Microsoft would get into the smartphone OS market and achieve a dominant position, and then muscle Google out of mobile search and advertising. That's why Android is open source (well, mostly). Google made the Android OS free for manufacturers to use with their phones as a way to get them to use Android instead of a Microsoft OS.

The strategy worked brilliantly. Android has done exactly what Google wanted it to accomplish. Microsoft has never gained any meaningful market share in the smartphone market. And between Android and various deals with Apple, Google has a tremendous presence with smartphone users.

No - they bought Android 2 years before the iPhone was announced, and 6-12 months before rumors about it appeared.

You're thinking of the apocryphal story that Google completely pivoted Android when Eric Schmidt heard about the iPhone at the last Apple board meeting before the iPhone announcement

When YouTube and Android was first launched, Google was not nearly as big as it is today. There were even questions about Google's viability back then given that most of their revenue came from online advertising.

It would be interesting to see how many of these acquisitions are still around. I think survivorship bias is strong here.

There's just no way Android's acquisition would or could have been stopped.

Google bought it in July 05, one year after IPO. The smartest phones available were the Blackberry 7750, Motorola Q, and Palm Treo. Google had $3B in revenue in 04 and was on its way to $6B in revenue in 05 when it spent $50MM on Android.

There was no way this acquisition would have been blocked without clairvoyance. Even then "stop this $3B company from buying a startup because it's going to destroy a $35B company in 9 years" is not exactly a compelling argument.

The argument is even more nonsensical than that against Facebook's Instagram acquisition, which is saying something. People argue that DOJ or FTC should have stopped a company that hadn't yet IPOd from buying a company that had raised $7MM (and would raise $50MM a few days before the facebook acquisition).

Sure they're obviously huge in retrospect but they really weren't at the time. Interesting and hot companies die all the time: YikYak and Secret looked like they were going to take over the world at one point.