• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 21, 2025

Google has spent nearly $66 billion on its top 10 acquisitions -- with half of that spent on acquiring Wiz, estimates CB Insights.

But how do you put a price on security -- especially when the threats are related to your top business, cloud services and online advertising?

In a research note published earlier this week, the analyst firm wrote that the $33 billion acquisition of cloud security Israeli startup Wiz is 2.4x larger than its second-largest purchase, Motorola Mobility, in 2012. It even surpassed Cisco’s acquisition of Splunk for $28 billion in March 2024.

The analyst firm makes an interesting point. Google’s merger-and-acquisition strategy has evolved from ad technology, such as YouTube and DoubleClick, to mobile such as Nest and Motorola, to cloud such as Mandiant and Looker. Now the company needs cloud security to protect this movement.

Google's acquisition of Wiz addresses security challenges in the cloud services and ad-serving era, driven by AI-powered threats and safety.

Wiz strengthened its position as a leader in cloud cyber security, especially since Assaf Rappaport, co-founder and CEO at Wiz, walked away from a potential $23 billion acquisition by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, last year.

Wiz this week reached an acquisition deal with Alphabet that had a price tag of $32 billion.

“The company generates about $700mn of annualized recurring revenue — a common metric used by software start-ups,” reported the Financial Times. People familiar with the company said “it was on track for that figure to surpass $1bn this year.”

Did Rappaport plan this move? Some insiders said yes, although the company publicly said there were no plans to go public in 2025. It hired a former executive at DreamWorks and Tanium as a chief financial officer.

Sometimes hiring a CFO is a sign of getting books ready for a public offering, Bill Hogan, board member and advisor at the cybersecurity company Sphere that specializes in Identity Hygiene, wrote in an email to MediaPost. 

“One of the reasons the talks failed previously was the inability of the two companies to agree on whether Wiz would remain a separate division or be integrated into Google Cloud,” he wrote. “Plus, the high regulatory scrutiny for large transactions during the Biden administration also contributed to the deal’s breakdown last summer.”

Now that the deal is done, he said, it will have a significant impact on the cybersecurity space. “We will just have to wait and see how,” he wrote.

The AI boom will require Google and others that support cloud services to tighten cybersecurity, even if they must spend billions of dollars to get there.

The acquisition is just one more creative move for Google to take additional market share to compete with Amazon, Google, Oracle and others.

For the sake of keeping companies, brands and advertisers safe, here's hoping that the Department of Justice doesn't view this as a monopoly.