Google has acquired Russian online-advertising company Begun from its parent company, Rambler, for $140 milllion. There are two reasons why.— other than an obvious desire to produce more Russian Google commercials like the one shown here.

Depending on how much of Yahoo's search business it ends up running, Google could soon take in up to 95 percent of all search-advertising spending in the U.S. So other than secular growth, there isn't much more room for Google to grow domestically. The second reason: Russia's economy continues to boom while the U.S. dollar continues to sink. Google owed much of its first quarter growth to foreign revenues that look even better when converted to the dollar.