Private-equity firms can assist an acquirer by providing needed financing or advice on how a target could be restructured or carved up after a deal closes.

“There are opportunities,” Don Harrison, Google’s mergers and acquisitions chief, said in an in interview at the Bloomberg Next Big Thing Summit in Half Moon Bay, California. “At some point I think you’ll see a transaction.”

Google, seeking to boost sales through acquisitions, uses an approach it dubs the “toothbrush test” to assess whether a potential target is handy enough to be accessed once or twice a day, Harrison said in televised remarks. The company is closing deals at a pace of about one every other week, he said.

“We apply something called the toothbrush test, which is we ask ourselves, ‘Is this something people use once or twice a day and does it solve a problem,’” Harrison said.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, bought Waze Inc. for $1.1 billion earlier this month, gaining technology that draws on user input to make maps more accurate.

“That vibrant crowdsourced information will allow us to make our maps vibrant and useful, more accessible,” Harrison said.

While Google takes valuation into consideration during acquisitions, the company will pay a premium for an asset with ’’aggressive’’ user growth, he said.