Welcome to Google's world

Google is on a spending spree, buying up firms that could give it the edge in areas such as robotics and AI, write Dan Buckley and Mark Blinch .

Google owns the present — now it wants the future. Backed by a $58bn cash war chest, Google has started to look far beyond traditional computing devices and is snapping up individual pieces to put together a “real life internet”, a behemoth that will dominate and dictate all aspects of our daily lives — but controlling the software and hardware.

The company is betting its future on the fact that one day cars, fridges, mobile phones, computers and home devices will talk with each other, generating insights that can be converted into data — opening up advertising opportunities.