• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, August 1, 2012

Another day, another Google acquisition -- but this time the buy focuses on social media. At Wildfire, which the company recently acquired, about 400 employees support 16,000 customers, including 30 of the top 50 brands. Through Wildfire's technology, brands serve marketing and ad campaigns on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube. But that's not all when it comes to building out its advertising stack to support new hardware.

Google can now better convince agencies and brands to buy search, display and social ads from one company for both desktop and mobile -- even to purchase them on competing platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It also will give Google access to Facebook data and improve the integration into its search engine results, as well as provide brands and agencies with one platform from which to measure all media.

"We've been working towards this end for some time," says Jason Miller, Google product management director, explaining how Google Analytics helps businesses measure the contribution of hundreds of social sites. Google's Admeld service helps to serve ads in Facebook developers' social apps, and the DoubleClick platform enables brands to run and measure ads across social Web sites, he says.

On Google+, brands already use a new set of API tools to access services like Vitrue, Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, HootSuite, Involver, and others.

Acquisitions will remain an important piece of Google's strategy, as management expects the current pace of acquisitions to continue, according to the company's most recent 10-Q filing. The Motorola Mobility acquisition, which closed on May 22, took Google on a new direction into hardware.

While the move gives Google fodder to build out an advertising stack to support hardware devices, such as the Nexus 7 tablet and the Nexus Q entertainment streaming device, the move into manufacturing hardware proves a bit challenging.

For starters, Google pushed out the release date for the Nexus Q, which the company manufactures in the United States, to broaden the services offered through the device. Today it streams music and video. The company said Tuesday it will delay the launch of the $299 home-entertainment device to make it even better.

A focus on hardware no doubt increases research and development expenses for the company. At Google, R&D rose to $351 million from the three months ending June 30, 2012, compared with the year-ago quarter, which includes $143 million related to Motorola. The remaining increase of $208 million resulted from miscellaneous expenses called out in the SEC filing.

Apparently, Google plans to make a go at generating revenue from building and selling hardware through the Motorola business. A line item in its most recent 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission states "We generate revenues from our Google business primarily by delivering online advertising, and from our Motorola business primarily by selling hardware products."

The Mobile segment designs, manufactures, sells and services wireless mobile devices like smartphones and media tablets, with integrated software and accessories, and licenses intellectual property. The Home segment designs, manufactures, sells, installs and services set-top boxes for digital and Internet protocol (IP) video, satellite and terrestrial broadcast networks, and Internet protocol television (IPTV), broadband access network infrastructure platforms, and associated software solutions to cable TV and telecommunications service providers.