Google might be trailing Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in the public cloud, but the search giant-cum-infrastructure provider isn’t giving up the chase just yet – on the contrary, it’s all set to invest millions of dollars in order to build out its own offerings.

Google’s cloud ambitions are well known. Late last year, the company’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure Urs Hölzle confidently proclaimed that its cloud business revenues would outstrip those of its ad business within just five years. That claim provoked a lot of interest, and Google stirred things up further when it hired ex-VMware Inc. co-founder Diane Greene to head up its cloud business, shortly after acquiring her stealthy Los Altos-based startup Bebop.

Now, Re/code reports that Greene has spent the last few months filling out a wish list of companies she’d like to acquired to bolster Google’s cloud, and unlike her last company, those on her shopping list are anything but stealthy.

According to Re/Code, the idea is to buy companies that sell business service apps and integrate their offerings with Google’s own cloud data storage business. While none of these reports can be confirmed, it’s said that Google is looking to snap up Canada’s famous e-commerce firm Shopify Inc., along with payroll app provider Namely Inc., and also Xactly Corp., which offers a sales tracker. Shares in Shopify and Xactly where both trading higher after Re/Code reported the rumors on Friday.

Not surprisingly, none of the concerned companies would offer a comment on the speculation, but Re/Code does have a decent track record on these kinds of rumors. However, the report also notes that all three potential acquisitions are still at the “early talks” stage, so it may be that they never come close to agreeing terms, even if the reports about the rumors are correct.

Those rumors come after Google’s cloud received a tremendous boost last week with the news that Apple has switched from its exclusive reliance on AWS’s cloud, and is now storing up to $600 million-worth of iCloud documents and photos on Google’s servers.

We may hear more about these rumored acquisitions at the GCP Next conference in San Francisco, which kicks off on Wednesday.

Photo Credit: Felipe Nogs via Compfight cc