French, British, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch.. they all had vast outreach across the globe on multiple continents.

Why did Germans not have this much outreach?

In order to support a global empire, you need to be capable of supplying and defending your outposts with a strong Navy. The five other European nations that you named all had long naval traditions and the growth and decline of their empires reflect their respective abilities to support and defend their overseas assets.

Failing to recognise the importance of the navy in this respect was one of the reasons that Spain's empire declined as those of Britain and France started to flourish.

Given their position within Europe, the German states didn't have strong naval traditions and, therefore, didn't have the power to project their power and protect overseas colonies (and trade routes). It was only after German unification and the growth of a German Navy that they were able to compete with the other European empires. By which time, of course, most of the claimable lands in the world had already been taken (and, in some cases, already lost) because the other empires had a few hundred years head-start.

Additional Reading:
The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660–1783, A.T.Mahan (1890)
The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812, A.T.Mahan (1892)

Which Germany do you mean?

Something that can reasonably called a German nation-state was founded only in 1871, when Prussia first defeated France and then unified most German states under their leadership in the Kaiserreich.

Before there had been a messy rivalry between Prussia and Austria for the leadership in what used to be the Holy Roman Empire -- not very holy, not very roman, and not much of an empire. That was concluded in Austro-Prussian War of 1866, when Prussia kicked Austria out of the slowly forming Germany.

The Kaiserreich was at first heavy influenced by Bismarck, who believed that Germany was better off without colonies. At the time, this probably was a correct estimate. Those colonies that could have been seized were not worth the effort. Bismarck was fired by Wilhelm II, whose expansionist policies contributed to the tensions which led to the First World War.

So Germany missed the early rounds of colonialism because it wasn't there.

This question assumes a 1913 viewpoint and relies on nationalist definitions of a state and its 'colonial empire'.

That is a bit problematic.

Take the Dutch Colonial Empire as an example: when that started, with its origins listed as 1543–1652, the Dutch Republic was part of the Holy Roman Empire.

The first German colony was a private enterprise, not unlike Virginia, when the ruler of Spain, the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Charles V granted the Welsers in 1528 to establish 'something' in Venezuela. This capitalist endeavour failed mainly due to mismanagement.

The Bavarians wanted to colonise New York when the city that was there was still called Nieuw Amsterdam.

The early Brandenburg-Prussia colonies in Africa were initially 'successful' in enslaving people and partaking in the triangular trade, but the repeated failures of the weak Navy to establish its own turf in the Carribean lead to a recalculation of profitability. This together with Frederick Williams hobby of collecting soldiers on land close to home led to simple abandonment of such projects.

In summary, while there were somehow German colonies, or rather Germanic, as no German nationstate existed, with varying degrees of success, there was no concerted and sustained effort to systematically expand these for the first few hundred years. Until Bismarck was carried to the hunt by nationalist imperialists. As already noted in Steve Bird's answer, the naval support of overseas possessions was also a constant problem. The Bavarian Navy knows what that means.