Bloomberg.com: GOOG acquisitions

"Google, owner of the most-popular Internet search engine, has about 15 people working on acquisitions that meet with dozens of companies a week, Ullah said. Mountain View, California-based Google responds to every e-mail pitching a company, while phone calls have a 10 percent response rate, he said. "

"``The crazy ones mean they ignore the usual restraints of investment levels required or design parameters or `Gee I need more servers than anyone ever thought was possible','' Ullah said. ``When you free yourselves from these constraints, you create crazy, cool things.''
Google wants companies that can build revenue streams from their users, instead of buying firms with a lot of users that don't bring in much in sales, Ullah said.
``We don't do traffic for traffic's sake,'' he said. ``It has to be highly monetizable.''
In the past Google has also used a technique called Monte Carlo analysis to size up a deal, where computer algorithms are used to answer questions."