Google Acquisitions and Investments (Graphic).

A subway map of Google's Acquisitions.

It was interesting for me, as I studied this article that I found through Digg. It was about Google’s Acquisitions over the years. We hear about them all the time, it isn’t anything new, but I guess what shocked me is how many of them that we haven’t heard about. And on top of that, how many of the technologies that Google has, have come directly through these acquisitions. I always assumed that Google was actually developing these technologies (silly me). This makes Google more of a holding company than anything else.

On top of that, when you look at the history of Google’s hiring and they have been known to sort of “buy out” the best in the industry. Everyone has heard about their wonderful accommodations and the benefits that their employees get, but does anyone ask why?

I ran across an interesting article recently. It was a blog post from a google employee. What shocked me about this article is that it isn’t like the article I had come to expect with one of Google’s 7,000 blogs they seem to publish.

It wasn’t about some new technology that they had invented. It wasn’t about how they were going to trash the competition with some new service that they will offer. It wasn’t about how wonderful their job is at the Googleplex , and how they get paid 6 figures for dinking around at their computer. No this article was from a Google employee, high up, that was leaving and actually expressing relief and discontent from the company. Maybe the days of Google Bliss are gone. Or maybe they never existed. One employee of seven years finally tells us the true story from the inside.