Don Harrison became Google's head of mergers and acquisitions about a year ago. But he's been helping Google (GOOG) buy companies since 2001, when the company snapped up the Internet newsgroups archive Deja News, its first acquisition ever.

    Harrison, then a lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, joined Google in 2005. After a dozen years working the legal side of deals, he took over the business side when his predecessor, David Lawee, left to oversee a new Google investment arm. Under Harrison, the pace of deals has accelerated with the acquisitions of Waze, the navigation app; Nest, the smart home devices maker; DeepMind Technologies, an artificial intelligence startup; and a string of robotics companies.

    In his first interview since he became vice president of corporate development, Harrison spoke with Fortune about how CEO Larry Page thinks about acquisitions.

    Fortune: It seems like Larry Page wants to use M&A more aggressively to push Google in new directions.

    Harrison: Larry does want to be active in identifying areas where we can make big bets, were we can use moonshot thinking.

    Over the past year, a lot of deals are for companies that have ended up over at Google X, the semi-secret lab were Google cooks up its most advanced projects. What kind of mandate has Larry given you?

    They are not so much Google X as new product areas within Google. At its highest level the mandate is to find interesting companies that are moving things forward that are solving big problems.

    Our acquisitions generally fall into three rough buckets. We look for smaller deals that are focused on talent and technology. We also focus on areas where we identified a core functionality that we are we are trying to implement across a product, and we can fill out that offering as a result of buying companies. There's a third area, which is still core, where we recognize that we need to be in an area, but we need to get to scale quickly.

    Those three have been fairly consistent since 2007. This year, I sort of got to add to that this desire from Larry to really identify some big bets and add new product areas [to Google].

    So what are the deals that fall under the new mandate to stretch Google into new areas?

    Nest and Andy Rubin efforts are the biggest examples of this. Andy's efforts in automation are about building a new product area. We have helped him buy seven or eight companies that he has assembled into a pretty comprehensive approach to automation. Those are areas that Google as a whole has been interested in. [They] are somewhat outside the core, but we see a future where those things can work very well with our existing products and services.

    一年前，丹•哈里森成为谷歌公司（Google）的收购与并购负责人。但实际上，从2001年起，他就直在帮助谷歌进行收购。当时，谷歌抢购了互联网新闻组服务网站Deja News。这是这家公司的第一笔收购交易。

    哈里森原先是Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati律师事务所的一名律师，2005年加入谷歌。十年来，他一直负责谷歌并购交易的法律事务。后来，他的前任、戴维•劳威被调任到谷歌旗下的一家投资机构担任负责人，哈里森便接管了有关商业事宜。在哈里森的领导下，谷歌公司加快了并购的步伐，先后收购了导航应用Waze；智能家用设备制造商Nest；人工智能初创公司DeepMind Technologies；以及多家机器人公司。

    担任谷歌企业发展副总裁后，哈里森首次接受媒体采访。他对《财富》杂志（Fortune）谈到了公司CEO拉里•佩奇对收购的看法。

    《财富》杂志：拉里•佩奇似乎希望通过更激进的并购将谷歌推向新的方向。

    哈里森：拉里确实希望积极参与到前景广阔的领域，在这些领域我们可以用到探索式思维。

    过去一年，谷歌的许多交易都进入了半公开的实验室Google X。谷歌在这里策划自己最先进的项目。拉里给过你怎样的授权？

    谷歌的Google X项目并没有新产品领域那么多。我得到的最高授权就是，寻找一些正在致力于解决重大问题的、有意思的公司。

    我们的收购通常分成三个领域。首先，我们会寻找专注于人才与技术的小型交易。其次，我们所关注的领域是，我们认为它拥有我们希望在一款产品中实现的核心功能，通过收购公司，可以让这款产品更完满。第三个领域也与公司的核心业务有关。一旦我们认为需要进入一个领域，但必须迅速实现规模化，我们就会进行第三种收购。

    从2007年以来，我们一直在坚持这个原则。今年，我又增加了拉里的另外一个要求。他希望参与一些大项目，（为谷歌）增加新的产品领域。

    那么，根据为谷歌拓展新领域的要求，公司进行了哪些交易？

    Nest公司和安迪•鲁宾就是最好的例子。安迪在自动化方面的努力目的是建立一个新的产品领域。我们帮助他收购了七、八家公司，他将这些公司组合成一家进行自动化研究的综合性公司。谷歌一直对这些领域非常感兴趣。虽然它们不属于谷歌的核心业务，但我们看到了它们的未来，它们将很好地配合我们现有的产品与服务。

    A lot of people see Nest as a jumping-off point to building hardware in new areas. Are they right?

    At this stage, it's really about helping [Nest CEO] Tony Fadell achieve his vision as fast as possible. And we believe that if we achieve his vision as fast as possible then it really opens up some opportunities in the future.

    Nest was a Google Ventures investment. Is Google Ventures a sort of lead generation machine for Google's M&A?

    We have a very strong ethical wall that prevents us from sharing information back and forth. I have a very close relationship with the partners at Google Ventures and with Bill Maris [who heads the venture group], but it's the same relationship I have at Kleiner Perkins or at Andreessen Horowitz and all the major VCs.

    When you are negotiating a deal like Nest, isn't there an inherent conflict of interest? Google wants the lowest possible price, and Google Ventures presumably wants the highest possible price.

    We have very strong rules in order to protect ourselves, but also to protect the target companies. Where I'm involved, Google Ventures will recuse themselves. In Nest, I negotiated with Kleiner [an early investor in Nest], and I negotiated with Tony [Fadell]. Google Ventures stayed out of providing advice in connection with the acquisition. And we do that across all our acquisitions were we are interested in a Google Ventures portfolio company.

    Early on, Google was not known as the best acquirer of companies from the point of view of entrepreneurs. How much had to work at this?

    We now have leads on my team that are embedded in the different product areas at Google. They're very closely in tune with the strategy for each of these product areas. There is a much tighter fit in terms of understanding what deals we look at and what deals are successful.

    On the integration backend, we are data-driven and we're focused. We'll still make mistakes, but we have the processes in place to make sure we don't make the same mistake twice.

    You mentioned mistakes. Many people see your recent deal to sell the Motorola handset business to Lenovo as unwinding a mistake, even though the initial acquisition of Motorola was in large part to buy its patent portfolio, which Google has kept.

    I think the Motorola transaction has been a success for us. Financially, we bought the asset for $12.5 billion. It had $3 billion in cash; we were able to sell the Home division for $2.5 billion; we ended selling the handset division for $3 billion. There were some other tax assets as well. When you work through the math, you realize we spent between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion for the patent assets. At the time, the nearest comparable transaction was the Nortel patent auction where Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL) teamed up to buy that asset for $4.5 billion. And there's a good argument that the Motorola patent portfolio is a better portfolio.

    As Larry noted, if you want to compete in the [handset] space you do need to be all in. We realized that Lenovo as a partner was all in, so that transaction made sense.

    许多人认为，Nest是谷歌进军新硬件领域的一个起点。是这样吗？

    在目前这个阶段，我们的主要任务是尽快帮助（Nest公司CEO）托尼•法德尔实现他的愿景。我们相信，只要他的愿景能够尽快实现，未来必将为我们创造更多机遇。

    智能家居公司Nest是谷歌风投部门Google Ventures投资的公司。对谷歌的并购部门来说，Google Ventures是否相当于业务扩展器？

    我们有着严密的信息隔离墙，以阻止部门间来回分享信息。我与Google Ventures的合伙人及部门主管比尔•马里斯关系密切，但这种关系与我和凯鹏华盈（Kleiner Perkins）、安德森•霍洛维茨基金（Andreessen Horowitz）及其它大型风投的关系是一样的。

    洽谈某个交易时，比如Nest的收购中，谷歌与Google Ventures之间是否存在固有的利益冲突？谷歌想尽可能把价格压低，而Google Ventures想必希望尽量抬高价格。

    我们有非常硬性的规定，既要保护自身的利益，同时也要保护目标公司的利益。我一旦介入某个交易，Google Ventures就会申请撤离谈判。在Nest交易中，我是与克莱纳（Nest早期的一位投资人）和托尼•法德尔进行谈判的。有关这一交易，Google Ventures不会发表任何看法。如果我们Google Ventures旗下的投资组合公司感兴趣，我们在收购时都会采取这样的做法。

    早前，从创业者的角度来看，谷歌并不是最好的收购方。你们付出了多大的努力来改变这一点？

    现在我有很多团队成员专注于谷歌产品的各个领域，他们对每一个领域的最新战略都了如指掌。由此我们就能更好地了解哪些交易值得关注，同时能更好地判断交易是否成功。

    在整合的后端，我们非常重视数据，也非常专注。我们仍然会犯错误，但已有的流程会确保同样的错误不会一犯再犯。

    你提到了错误，许多人倒认为你最近把摩托罗拉（Motorola）手机部门卖给联想（Lenovo）是在弥补一个错误，尽管最初收购摩托罗拉很大程度是为了它的专利组合，而谷歌最终也的确保留了这些专利。

    我认为摩托罗拉是一笔很成功的交易。从财务方面来看，我们最初买下它时花了125亿美元。卖出的时候，摩托罗拉还有30亿美元现金；家居部门卖了25亿美元，最后手机部门又以38亿美元卖出；我们还获得了一些所得税资产。从数目上你可以看到，我们为摩托罗拉的专利资产花费了25到35亿美元。当时与这笔收购最接近的一项交易是北电网络公司（Nortel）的专利拍卖，微软公司（Microsoft）和苹果公司（Apple）合伙以45亿美元买了下来。但有这么一个观点，说摩托罗拉的专利组合比北电网络的还要好。

    拉里也说过，如果想参与手机领域的竞争，必须全面进入这个行业。我们注意到联想公司作为合伙人已全面进军这一领域，因此这笔交易非常合理。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/朱毓芬/汪皓