You've probably been reading more and more about Google's recent acquisition binge, what it means to privacy, monopolistic concerns, etc. Unfortunately, I haven't been seeing enough of what it means to Google as a business.will they allow Google to grow more profitably in the future, will they create some sort of economic moat?
To understand the future, we need to peer into the past. With the help of the Wiki article on Google's past acquisitions, the following is an attempt to score each acquisition. A "good" or "bad" acquisition is based solely on whether Google has done anything useful, to date, with that acquisition. Since we have no real insight into the depths of Google, in terms of key engineers that might have floated from one project to another, it is conjecture at best. But hey, we hope you enjoy the analysis anyhow.
The Google Report Card
| Date |
Company |
Business Area |
Good/Bad |
| September 20, 2001 |
Deja's Usenet archive |
Google Groups |
GOOD
(still being used and out of beta) |
| September 20, 2001 |
Outride, Inc. |
Online retrieval tech |
GOOD
(info retrieval is key to the search business) |
| February, 2003 |
Pyra Labs |
Blogger |
MIXED
(nothing has been done with blogger since the purchase, but money is made off of all the MFA sites) |
| April, 2003 |
Neotonic Software |
CRM technology |
MIXED
(good if you count automated support a positive thing; bad if you are trying to actually resolve an issue) |
| April, 2003 |
Applied Semantics |
Adwords / Adsense |
GOOD
(adwords and adsense made Google the money printer that it is) |
| September 30, 2003 |
Kaltix |
Search engine technology |
GOOD
(acquiring patents for the core business is almost always good) |
| May 10, 2004 |
Ignite Logic |
Template maker |
BAD
(aside from use in Blogger, where else does Google need templates?) |
| July 13, 2004 |
Picasa |
Photo management software |
MIXED
(bad in that they haven’t done anything with it yet, good in that they still could do a lot with it) |
| October 27, 2004 |
Keyhole, Inc. |
Google Earth |
GOOD
(a popular product with income potential) |
| Sept.-Dec., 2004 |
Where2 |
Google Maps |
GOOD
(a nice compliment to Google Earth) |
| Sept.-Dec., 2004 |
ZipDash |
Google Ride Finder |
GOOD
(if it ever gets out of beta it has potential) |
| 2005 |
2Web Technologies |
Spreadsheets |
GOOD
(part of Google’s office suite) |
| March 28, 2005 |
Urchin Software Corporation |
Web stats |
GOOD
(Google gets more user data.information is power; a recurring theme) |
| May 12, 2005 |
Dodgeball |
Social networking |
BAD
(nothing was done with this) |
| July, 2005 |
Reqwireless |
Web browser and wireless e-mail |
MIXED
(good for near term, but long-term the only difference between a office computer and a phone is the browser agent is slightly tweaked) |
| July 7, 2005 |
Current Communications Group |
Broadband Internet |
GOOD
(this is really good. Control upstream data [more power] and bypass greedier cable companies) |
| August 17, 2005 |
Android |
PDA software |
BAD
(doubtful that PDA specific software will matter for too much longer - see Reqwireless) |
| November, 2005 |
Skia |
Graphics software |
GOOD
(part of Google's office suite) |
| November 17, 2005 |
Akwan Information Technologies |
Latin American Internet operations |
GOOD
(more upstream data; tap into a growing market) |
| January 17, 2006 |
dMarc Broadcasting |
Radio Advertising |
GOOD
(I think this might be one of their best purchases for expanding the ad network) |
| February 14, 2006 |
Measure Map |
Blog analysis |
GOOD
(more data, more power…and it can be useful in determining real blogs versus splogs) |
| March 9, 2006 |
Upstartle |
Word processing |
GOOD
(part of Google’s office suite) |
| March 14, 2006 |
@Last Software |
3-D modeling |
GOOD
(possible part of Google’s office suite) |
| April 9, 2006 |
Orion |
Search |
GOOD
(again…core product is search) |
| August 15, 2006 |
Neven Vision |
Photo aggregator |
GOOD
(good if it truly is used with Picasa to do something useful) |
| October 31, 2006 |
JotSpot |
Wiki creator |
MIXED
(similar to Pyra purchase, in terms of controlling the means for people to get started online – good if executed) |
| November, 2006 |
Youtube |
Online video |
GOOD
(this is a big ad revenue stream about to pop) |
| December, 2006 |
Endoxon |
Mapping solutions |
GOOD
(technologies will compliment Earth and Maps) |
| January, 2007 |
Xunlei |
Network, file-sharing |
GOOD
(control the user’s e-mail, virtual hard disk space…the entire dataset of being online) |
| February, 2007 |
Adscape |
Video game advertising |
GOOD
(another channel to push ads) |
| March, 2007 |
Trendalyzer |
Analysis |
GOOD
(understanding the data better, even at a fractional percentage, will result in higher revenue) |
| April, 2007 |
Tonic Systems |
Presentation software |
GOOD
(another product for Google’s office suite) |
| April, 2007 |
Marratech |
Video conferencing |
GOOD
(continue to control the medium for pushing ads…might be a good fit with dMarc) |
| May 11, 2007 |
GreenBorder Technologies |
Desktop enterprise security |
GOOD
(securing data and the user experience allows for further scaling) |
Google's Boosting Resources
So far, most of the purchases, from the outsider's point of view, were made to either bolster core search technologies, expand advertising reach, extend web accessibility value chain, or help to make sense of all the data. Even then, the acquisitions marked "mixed" or "bad" may have synergies we simply can't see right now, or as theorized above, were made more to acquire talent than any specific technology.
The Future Of Google
Does this mean the pending transactions of Doubleclick, Feedburner, and possibility Salesforce are a good idea? Most likely. Doubleclick could be used to once again expand that ad network, Feedburner would bring access to even more user information, and Salesforce would be a mixed opinion, likely used as a compliment to Neotonic.
I want to know when Google is going to stop holding back though; buy Apple and Nintendo, just to get it out of the way.
JoeSinkwitz
