The depth/extent of the plan is surely debatable, but folks like Larry and Sergey and Eric Schmidt would not make the decision to pull the trigger for an acquis

The depth/extent of the plan is surely debatable, but folks like Larry and Sergey and Eric Schmidt would not make the decision to pull the trigger for an acquisition unless they knew what they wanted out of it. They are smarter than that . In the case of MeasureMap, for instance, they knew they wanted that technology integrated into Google Analytics. They may not have been able to answer the "how" part of "who, what, when, where, why, and how", but surely they knew the "who", "what", and "why". I understand that the startup built the technology and the acquirer didn't. That's the beauty of how this system is set up - a company like Google with piles of cash and stock can has so much money it can buy anything it wants. Well then how do they decide which startups to buy (MeasureMap, Feedburner, etc.) and which startups to pass on (Digg)? That's the "master plan"..