Teracent, of course, is far from Google's first foray into the online advertising world; as most people who use the Web can't help but know, Google-served ads are practically everywhere these days. Here's an overall look at Google's ad-related acquisitions and how they play into your online life.

Teracent: Google's Display-Advertising Acquisition

Reading the way Google describes , it's not hard to understand how it'll fit into the company's advertising ecosystem.

"Teracent's technology can pick and choose from literally thousands of creative elements of a display ad in real-time -- tweaking images, products, messages or colors," Google's explains. "These elements can be optimized depending on factors like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads."

Teracent's technology is expected to become available to advertisers using Google's Content Network and DoubleClick program. Yahoo, incidentally, with Teracent earlier this year. There's no word yet how the Google acquisition could affect that relationship (though "badly" might be a logical guess).