• October 2, 2009, 10:36 AM ET

Next Stop, Android: Mapping Google’s Investments

Keeping track of the strategic moves of a company like Google can be tricky.

The management site Meet the Boss has taken a stab, creating a diagram of Google’s investments and acquisitions in a map reminiscent of London’s tube system.

Each subway line is color-coded to represent an industry that Google has touched — for example, advertising companies such as Adscape and Applied Semantics are on a bright pink line, with imaging tools Picasa and Panoramio in purple.

Interconnected companies on different subway lines are joined with a white “link” icon. The map also notes the year each company was bought by Google or received an investment from it.

Bottom line: Google has made a lot of acquisitions. Most notably in the Web-services industry — the green subway line, which includes presentation-creation company Tonic Systems and email-security firm Postini, snakes around the entire diagram. Google was particularly busy in 2007, with the highest number of investments (15) made during any of its years in operation, as well as the most expensive year, with the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.

The map shows the dates of Google’s initial investments, some of which are no longer in operation. It sold its stake in Chinese search engine Baidu in 2006, for example, and mobile social network Dodgeball has been shuttered.