Google Acquisition Spree: Is Social Networking Next?

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Google(GOOG) is undoubtedly aware of the amount of time Americans spend online on social networking sites, which may go a long way to explaining the company's recent acquisition spree.

Americans spend 22.7% of their time online on social networking sites according to research from The Nielsen Company. That's up 43% from 15.8% last year.

Online games account for 10.2% of all U.S. Internet time, making it the second most used activity after social networks.

With this major shift in how Americans spend their time, it's not much of a stretch to assume that Google would want to launch a social networking and gaming service of its own.

In the past month Google has acquired several different social networking related companies and has been in talks with online game manufacturers such as Playdom, Electronic Arts'(ERTS) Playfish and Zynga Game Network.

It seems Google is gathering companies that offer the same type of services that make social networks such as Facebook such a powerful force on the Internet. The search-engine giant has landed its virtual hands on social gaming companies, rival search engine companies and a news aggregation site.

The following is a look at to find out the companies Google has bought to presumably build the foundation for a new social networking platform and what each service has to offer.