Amazon Poised For Big 2014 After Smallest Acquisition Year Since 2007

2013 was a bit of an anomaly for the online retail giant Amazon. It was the company's smallest year in terms of acquisitions, but the company could be poised to have a big 2014. In 2013, Amazon only spent $195 million in acquisitions, the lowest amount for the company since 2007. Amazon's biggest purchase was Goodreads, a book recommendation service that Amazon bought for $150 million. This is a big departure from from previous years — for instance, Amazon purchased warehouse robotics company Kiva Systems for $678 million in 2012 (perhaps the company helped with Amazon's new drone delivery program?). In 2011, Amazon spend $771 million, and bought diapers.com parent company Quidsi for $540 million. Since Amazon is such a big player in the mergers and acquisition arena, many are hypothesizing that Amazon is planning on having a big 2014 by buying a company with expertise in a new area or buying out a smaller competitor.

, Amazon announced that they were opening new marketing and customer service offices in Israel and conducted a number of discussions with new cyber-security firms in the area. The purpose of those talks, apparently, were to discuss an acquisition and use it as a research and development base. All of the firms that Amazon spoke to were focused in cloud-computing information security — these firms try to improve the security around sensitive data thats stored remotely for both regular customers and enterprise clients. If Amazon ramps up its acquisition levels to match previous years, like many are hypothesizing, 2014 should be a big year for the online retail giant.