By Peter Garnry
Google (GOOG:xnas) is up 51 percent over the past year as the technology company, butressed by an excellent third-quarter result, is firing on all cylinders. But it is not so much the fact that Google has recently surpassed Microsoft in market capitalisation to become the third most valued company in the world behind only Apple (AAPL:xnas) and ExxonMobil (XOM:xnys), that it is capturing investors imagination. It is rather the announcement over the weekend that Google has bought Boston Dynamics, a US-based technology company famous for building humanoids and other advanced robotics for the US military.
Robotics spending spree
The weekend's acquisition was the eighth robotics acquisition in six months and the efforts are driven by Ray Kurzweil, regular speaker of singularity. It seems Google is now combining advanced technology in hardware, software and artificial-intelligence. The underlying strategy behind these acquisitions fit very well within Google's endeavours into self-driving cars that eventually will reduce congestion and give time-scarce people the chance to do something productive while being transported from A to B.
I have previously written about robotics and why I think it will become one of the major disruptive forces this century. The merging of the physical world, software and artificial-intelligence is the powerful combination that will likely take the human race to the next level. It is clear that Google's strengths lie in the nexus of this trend and the management has obviously come to the conclusion that Google has to be a major force in robotics in the future. I believe it is a clever move and another reason to be long Google.
