Google’s 2010 M&A activity has been proceeding at a spectacular space as we revealed last week.  This week, we’re using CB Insights’ M&A data to look at the 2010 acquisition activity of many of the most notable and/or largest technology companies in the world. As you can see, there are many interesting observations that emerge from the year-to-date technology M&A figures.

Below is the 2010 data by tech company and some of our early observations.

2010 technology M&A trends by largest tech companies

Google is the most acquisitive technology company in the land

As is obvious from above, Google’s acquisition pace is significantly greater – almost double – of the next most acquisitive tech company, IBM.  Google’s mix of acquisitions as we’ll cover in a future analysis is quite varied with them doing larger acquisitions ($100 million plus) and also doing smaller talent acquisitions (the popularly coined “acqu-hire”).

You should sign up for access to CB Insights (it’s free) here if you want more information on the M&A activity of these technology behemoths.  Or you can click the green button to the right to get started.

Microsoft has done zero (yes – zero) acquisitions in 2010

Although they closed some deals in 2010 (Sentillion for example), these were all announced in 2009.  As of September 24, 2010, Microsoft has yet to announce a single acquisition in 2010.  Are there big plans for Q4 2010 or will this be a year that Microsoft focuses more on organic growth in lieu of inorganic, acquired growth?

Is Facebook becoming a technology acquisition powerhouse?

On a purely numbers basis, Facebook has jumped ahead of many of the tech bellwethers a la Cisco, Oracle, etc.  Of course, many of Facebook’s acquisitions are of the small tuck-in variety recruiting talent or interesting capabilities for the social networking giant.  So although the acquisition activity of Facebook puts them high in the league tables on an activity basis, the size of the franchises that the likes of Oracle, Dell, Cisco and Apple are acquiring are much larger than those of Facebook.

HP – Home of billion dollar M&A deals

Unlike Facebook with it’s smaller, fold-in acquisitions, HP has been not just acquisitive but doing large acquisition deals (four over $1 billion) with the aim to bring on technology, products and services that will move the proverbial needle at the behemoth tech company.

Cisco – A technology M&A stalwart slows down

Cisco which has historically figured into technology M&As most active players looks to be taking a breather of sorts in 2010 with only four acquisitions.

If you liked this analysis, you should follow CB Insights on twitter here for more data-driven insights.