????一年前，丹?哈里森成為谷歌公司（Google）的收購與并購負責人。但實際上，從2001年起，他就直在幫助谷歌進行收購。當時，谷歌搶購了互聯網新聞組服務網站Deja News。這是這家公司的第一筆收購交易。

????哈里森原先是Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati律師事務所的一名律師，2005年加入谷歌。十年來，他一直負責谷歌并購交易的法律事務。后來，他的前任、戴維?勞威被調任到谷歌旗下的一家投資機構擔任負責人，哈里森便接管了有關商業事宜。在哈里森的領導下，谷歌公司加快了并購的步伐，先后收購了導航應用Waze；智能家用設備制造商Nest；人工智能初創公司DeepMind Technologies；以及多家機器人公司。

????擔任谷歌企業發展副總裁后，哈里森首次接受媒體采訪。他對《財富》雜志（Fortune）談到了公司CEO拉里?佩奇對收購的看法。

????《財富》雜志：拉里?佩奇似乎希望通過更激進的并購將谷歌推向新的方向。

????哈里森：拉里確實希望積極參與到前景廣闊的領域，在這些領域我們可以用到探索式思維。

????過去一年，谷歌的許多交易都進入了半公開的實驗室Google X。谷歌在這里策劃自己最先進的項目。拉里給過你怎樣的授權？

????谷歌的Google X項目并沒有新產品領域那么多。我得到的最高授權就是，尋找一些正在致力于解決重大問題的、有意思的公司。

????我們的收購通常分成三個領域。首先，我們會尋找專注于人才與技術的小型交易。其次，我們所關注的領域是，我們認為它擁有我們希望在一款產品中實現的核心功能，通過收購公司，可以讓這款產品更完滿。第三個領域也與公司的核心業務有關。一旦我們認為需要進入一個領域，但必須迅速實現規模化，我們就會進行第三種收購。

????從2007年以來，我們一直在堅持這個原則。今年，我又增加了拉里的另外一個要求。他希望參與一些大項目，（為谷歌）增加新的產品領域。

????那么，根據為谷歌拓展新領域的要求，公司進行了哪些交易？

????Nest公司和安迪?魯賓就是最好的例子。安迪在自動化方面的努力目的是建立一個新的產品領域。我們幫助他收購了七、八家公司，他將這些公司組合成一家進行自動化研究的綜合性公司。谷歌一直對這些領域非常感興趣。雖然它們不屬于谷歌的核心業務，但我們看到了它們的未來，它們將很好地配合我們現有的產品與服務。

????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.