“For years,” writes Scott Austin for Dow Jones, “Cisco Systems Inc. has been the most prolific acquirer of venture-backed start-ups, pocketing 22 such companies since 2004, according to industry tracker VentureOne.  But Google has emerged at the top of the list so far this year, acquiring five venture-backed start-ups to Cisco’s four.”

Granted, five isn’t as impressive a number as 22 (though the numbers are from admittedly different periods of time), but Austin adds, “[Google’s] showing no sign of stopping, as the search outfit looks for companies that fit its overarching mission: ‘To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’”

And as some recent purchases demonstrate – think PeakStream, Panoramio, GreenBorder, and FeedBurner, just in the last month or so – there are a lot of corporations that apparently fit into that mission.  Austin isn’t kidding when he describes Google as “the cash-oozing search giant.”

Is this a good thing?  Well, definitely, if you happen to have a company that you’re looking to sell off.  As for Google (and its competitors), it’s a little harder to say if this spending spree is the best use of money.  There’s no doubting that the search engine company’s plans have worked so far, however.

We’d usually wait for another voice or two to chime in before printing this sort of thing, but The Register is a pretty solid source.  And as The Register’s Ashlee Vance puts it, “Google has stunned the server world by acquiring superstar start-up PeakStream.”

Vance also documented the strange fate of the software maker’s website, which – along with its phone lines – “mysteriously crashed yesterday.”  You’re welcome to keep an eye on it for yourselves – it could be any minute now that the site springs back to life, decked out in Google’s trademark colors.

Those are, to be honest, about all the solid facts that are available at the moment.  Vance provides a few details about PeakStream’s background – it “had developed tools that improve the performance of single-threaded applications on multi-core chips” – and goes on to note, once again, that Google’s acquisition of the company was completely unexpected – but that’s about it.

All the best to the folks at PeakStream, and their possible new owners at Google, as well, but here’s hoping that you guys come to embrace the concept of a press release.