Google Maps, the web application, was not an acquisition. Google bought two companies that made desktop mapping tools (One of them lived on as Google Earth Pro

Google Maps, the web application, was not an acquisition. Google bought two companies that made desktop mapping tools (One of them lived on as Google Earth Pro and was a commercial product they kept selling for years) and used that as a basis for developing the web based Google Maps. Also based on everything I can find, Gmail started as an in house project. reMail was acquired 5+ years after Gmail launched.