Google Goes Shopping: 27 Strategic Google Acquisitions, Partnerships, Investments
Posted: Thursday, April 14, 2011
by Mogama
http://www.mogama.info
Here are some of the key acquisitions and partnerships that continue to position Google, not Microsoft, as the world’s information technology leader.
(1) In a partnership deal, Google became Yahoo’s default search provider in June 2000.
(2) The company’s first public acquisition was when they bought Deja.com’s Usenet Discussion Service in February 2001 and relaunched the archive of 500 million Usenet discussions as Google Groups.
(3) Latin Americans began using Google as their search engine of “choice” when the company forged a partnership with Universo Online (UOL) in October 2001.
(4) A partnership with America Online (AOL) in May 2002 brought Google "search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.”
(5) The company took a huge bite of the explosively growing blogosphere in February 2003 when Google bought "Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.”
(6) Google pounced on a lion share of Internet advertising when on April 23, 2003 it took over “Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.” Here is how AdSense works: “Websites can sign up to display AdSense ads on their pages and be paid for every click made on the ads” (harvestseo.com).
(7) Google Earth was born by October 2004 when Google swallowed up Keyhole, “a digital mapping company”.
(8) Then came Google Analytics from the acquisition of Urchin, “a web analytics company”. That was March 2005.
(9) Google announced the takeover of dMarc, “a digital radio advertising company” in January 2006. Oozing with cash Google got acquisition fever that year.
(10) Google Docs was made possible when in March 2006 the company acquired Writely “a web-based word processing application”. Who needs Microsoft Word tied to a home computer when you can do word processing anywhere in the world over the Internet?
(11) This was perhaps Google’s biggest catch so far: In October 2006, Google announced its takeover of YouTube, the leading Internet video company.
(12) Shortly thereafter, October 2006, Google jumped into the website business when it acquired JotSpot, “collaborative wiki platform, which later becomes Google Sites.” Recently we started redirecting Church For All’s domain to a spot on Google Sites.
(13) The company entered the world’s largest search market when in January 2007 it announced “a partnership with China Mobile, the world‘s largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China.”
(14) By June 2007 Google entered a partnership with Salesforce.com, “combining that company's on-demand CRM applications with AdWords.” With AdWords, advertisers pay for specific words to show up in search results, hoping to send Internet traffic to their websites. Here is a fancier description: “AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads” (wikipedia.org).
(15) By July 2007 Google announced it had acquired Postini, “a company that offers security and corporate compliance solutions for email, IM, and other web-based communications.” Postini technology enhanced Google Apps, a service that makes it “easier for employees to communicate and share information while reducing the hassles and costs associated with enterprise software.”
(16) Google completed its takeover of Double Click in March 2008. Double Click was “the ad management and ad serving technology foundation for the world's buyers, creators and sellers of digital media.”
(17) In December 2008 Google formed a partnership with publishers “to digitize millions of magazine articles and make them readily available on Google Book Search.”
(18) Google went after On2 Technologies, “a high-quality video compression technology company”, in August 2009.
(19) Next Google captured reCAPTCHA “a technology company focused on Optical Character Recognition (OCR)—the process that converts scanned images into plain text.” That was September 2009.
(20) In October 2009 the company cut a deal with Twitter for tweets (Twitter updates) to show up in Google search results.
(21) The acquisition of Aardvark in February 2010 gave Google a social networking service that “lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge and experience of your friends and extended network of contacts.”
(22) Google goes deeper into photo editing when it snatches up Picnik in March 2010, enabling users to “edit your photos in the cloud, without leaving your browser.”
(23) In May 2010 Google added AdMob, “a mobile display advertising company.” This acquisition merges Google’s “search advertising know-how “with AdMob’s innovative solutions for advertising on mobile websites and in mobile applications.” In plain language: AdMob gives Google access to advertise on your cell phone, smart phone, tablet and other mobile gadgets.
(24) Google signs an agreement in July 2010 to buy ITA, “a software company specializing in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.” The purchase took place months later. On April 8, 2011, NPR reports, “The Justice Department has announced it will allow Google's $700 million purchase of a flight data software company. The Justice Department has approved Google's purchase of the travel software firm ITA — with some major conditions attached. ITA provides the raw data for most of the popular online travel sites. Many of those sites were worried that Google might use ITA to put them at a disadvantage.” You could say Google’s tentacles have now reached as high as the skies, but “the sky is the limit” may not apply to this new breed of corporate monstrosity.
(25) Metaweb, “a company that maintains an open database of things in the world”, becomes a Google joint in July 2010.
(26) Google dives deeper into social networking when in August 2010 it zaps up Slide, “a social technology company with an extensive history of building new ways for people to connect with others across numerous platforms online.”
(27) In August 2010, Google and Verizon made a joint announcement that proposed “an open Internet” policy. As long as the World Wide Web is an open forum the number of web surfers will keep growing by leaps and bounds, which means millions more clickers on Internet ads, which are most often than not Google ads! Millions of web surfers, billions in the bank for Google. Yeah. That's fair.
Now that Google has gained sufficient clout in the global economy, the company is poised to take giant (Google-size) steps in the green energy arena. This is Google’s newest gorilla dance, its noble attempt to easing or reversing the damages caused to our global village by man-made climate change. Google is dead serious about renewable energy: In May 2010, the company announced, “As part of our efforts to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, we make our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project” comprised of “two wind farms…developed by NextEra Energy Resources”. The agreement with NextEra Energy, an Iowa operation, finalized two months later in July 2010.
Read part one of this article >> Google’s Mission Strategy Beyond Google’s Mission Statement
(1) In a partnership deal, Google became Yahoo’s default search provider in June 2000.
(2) The company’s first public acquisition was when they bought Deja.com’s Usenet Discussion Service in February 2001 and relaunched the archive of 500 million Usenet discussions as Google Groups.
(4) A partnership with America Online (AOL) in May 2002 brought Google "search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com.”
(5) The company took a huge bite of the explosively growing blogosphere in February 2003 when Google bought "Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.”
(6) Google pounced on a lion share of Internet advertising when on April 23, 2003 it took over “Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.” Here is how AdSense works: “Websites can sign up to display AdSense ads on their pages and be paid for every click made on the ads” (harvestseo.com).
(7) Google Earth was born by October 2004 when Google swallowed up Keyhole, “a digital mapping company”.
(8) Then came Google Analytics from the acquisition of Urchin, “a web analytics company”. That was March 2005.
(9) Google announced the takeover of dMarc, “a digital radio advertising company” in January 2006. Oozing with cash Google got acquisition fever that year.
(10) Google Docs was made possible when in March 2006 the company acquired Writely “a web-based word processing application”. Who needs Microsoft Word tied to a home computer when you can do word processing anywhere in the world over the Internet?
(11) This was perhaps Google’s biggest catch so far: In October 2006, Google announced its takeover of YouTube, the leading Internet video company.
(12) Shortly thereafter, October 2006, Google jumped into the website business when it acquired JotSpot, “collaborative wiki platform, which later becomes Google Sites.” Recently we started redirecting Church For All’s domain to a spot on Google Sites.
(13) The company entered the world’s largest search market when in January 2007 it announced “a partnership with China Mobile, the world‘s largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China.”
(14) By June 2007 Google entered a partnership with Salesforce.com, “combining that company's on-demand CRM applications with AdWords.” With AdWords, advertisers pay for specific words to show up in search results, hoping to send Internet traffic to their websites. Here is a fancier description: “AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads” (wikipedia.org).
(15) By July 2007 Google announced it had acquired Postini, “a company that offers security and corporate compliance solutions for email, IM, and other web-based communications.” Postini technology enhanced Google Apps, a service that makes it “easier for employees to communicate and share information while reducing the hassles and costs associated with enterprise software.”
(16) Google completed its takeover of Double Click in March 2008. Double Click was “the ad management and ad serving technology foundation for the world's buyers, creators and sellers of digital media.”
(17) In December 2008 Google formed a partnership with publishers “to digitize millions of magazine articles and make them readily available on Google Book Search.”
(18) Google went after On2 Technologies, “a high-quality video compression technology company”, in August 2009.
(19) Next Google captured reCAPTCHA “a technology company focused on Optical Character Recognition (OCR)—the process that converts scanned images into plain text.” That was September 2009.
(20) In October 2009 the company cut a deal with Twitter for tweets (Twitter updates) to show up in Google search results.
(21) The acquisition of Aardvark in February 2010 gave Google a social networking service that “lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge and experience of your friends and extended network of contacts.”
(22) Google goes deeper into photo editing when it snatches up Picnik in March 2010, enabling users to “edit your photos in the cloud, without leaving your browser.”
(23) In May 2010 Google added AdMob, “a mobile display advertising company.” This acquisition merges Google’s “search advertising know-how “with AdMob’s innovative solutions for advertising on mobile websites and in mobile applications.” In plain language: AdMob gives Google access to advertise on your cell phone, smart phone, tablet and other mobile gadgets.
(24) Google signs an agreement in July 2010 to buy ITA, “a software company specializing in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.” The purchase took place months later. On April 8, 2011, NPR reports, “The Justice Department has announced it will allow Google's $700 million purchase of a flight data software company. The Justice Department has approved Google's purchase of the travel software firm ITA — with some major conditions attached. ITA provides the raw data for most of the popular online travel sites. Many of those sites were worried that Google might use ITA to put them at a disadvantage.” You could say Google’s tentacles have now reached as high as the skies, but “the sky is the limit” may not apply to this new breed of corporate monstrosity.
(25) Metaweb, “a company that maintains an open database of things in the world”, becomes a Google joint in July 2010.
(26) Google dives deeper into social networking when in August 2010 it zaps up Slide, “a social technology company with an extensive history of building new ways for people to connect with others across numerous platforms online.”
(27) In August 2010, Google and Verizon made a joint announcement that proposed “an open Internet” policy. As long as the World Wide Web is an open forum the number of web surfers will keep growing by leaps and bounds, which means millions more clickers on Internet ads, which are most often than not Google ads! Millions of web surfers, billions in the bank for Google. Yeah. That's fair.
Now that Google has gained sufficient clout in the global economy, the company is poised to take giant (Google-size) steps in the green energy arena. This is Google’s newest gorilla dance, its noble attempt to easing or reversing the damages caused to our global village by man-made climate change. Google is dead serious about renewable energy: In May 2010, the company announced, “As part of our efforts to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, we make our first direct investment in a utility-scale renewable energy project” comprised of “two wind farms…developed by NextEra Energy Resources”. The agreement with NextEra Energy, an Iowa operation, finalized two months later in July 2010.
Read part one of this article >> Google’s Mission Strategy Beyond Google’s Mission Statement
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