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A Look Back at Google’s Acquisitions

By corbyboy ⋅ August 19, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Over the years Google has acquired many companies. Some of the most innovative technolgoy products of the last few years have been snapped up by Google. Many of these they improve or incorporate into an exisiting product. Others, however, are left to stagnate or eventually are wound up.

According to the article on Wikipedia, Google has acquired 51 companies as of March 2008. The list below outlines most of them to give you an idea of just how much technology Google actually owns. The list is not comprehensive, but it lists all the big ones.

February 2001 - Deja

Deja was a Usenet discussion service that Google bought to develop into Google Groups. At the time Deja’s archive dated back to 1995. After the acquisition, the archives were extended back to 1981.

February 2003 - Pyra Labs Blogger Software

Blogger was first made available to the public in August 1999. Initially the product was offered for use free of charge but the company ran into financial trouble. After the loss of many employees, the company received some funding and released new ad-supported versions of Blogger. The company was acquired by Google in 2003, upon which the “pro” features were made available to everybody free of charge. Opening up features for free became a hallmark of Google’s acquisition policy.

April 2003 - Applied Semantics Online Advertising

The technology behind Google AdSense and AdWords is based on WordNet, a system that groups synonyms into sets based on their semantic relationships. A company called Oingo, a small search engine company founded in 1998, used this technology. Oingo changed its name to Applied Semantics in 2001. Google paid $102 million to acquire the company in 2003.

September 2003 - Kaltix Corp Search Engine

In the press release confirming the acquisition, Google said that it and Kaltix Corp “share a common commitment to developing innovative search technologies.” Google acquired that technology on 30 September 2003 and used it to develop iGoogle.

June 2004 - Baidu Chinese Search Engine - 2.6% Share

Estimates for the cost of the deal vary from $5 million to $10 million, but on 23 June 2004, Google bought a 2.6% share of Baidu, a Chinese language search engine. The money was used to upgrade their technology and to stabilise the company before it was floated on the Stock Market. In December 2007 Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the US NASDAQ100 Index.

July 2004 - Picasa Image Management Software

Picasa logo

Picasa became another service offered for free after Google’s acquisition from Idealab on 13 July 2004. Picasa has since become heavily integrated with Blogger.

September and October 2004 - Google Maps Enhancements

Between September and October 2004, Google purchased three companies: ZipDash, Where2 and Keyhole, Inc. The technology was used to enhance Google Maps and Google Earth, including Ride Finder.

March 2005 - Urchin Software Corporation

Google announced that they were purchasing Urchin on 28 March 2005. The company was founded in December 2005 and was originally called Web Depot. After a few years of serious investment they eventually became Urchin Software Corporation. Google used their Urchin web analytics software to develop Google Analytics.

August 2005 - Android Mobile Phone Software

Google and the Open Handset Alliance developed the Android software platform for mobile devices. It is based on the Linux operating system and allows users to develop using a java-like language.

The platform was announced on 5 November 2007 by the Open Handset Alliance, which consists of 34 different companies.

December 2005 - AOL (5% Share)

AOL Logo

On 20 December Google announced that they were paying $1 billion for a 5% stake in AOL. The investment allowed the two companies to co-operate on search and advertising. Prior to the acquisition the two companies had worked together on other projects.

January 2006 - dMarc Broadcasting

dMarc Broadcasting, Inc. is an advertising company that specialises in radio advertising. Upon purchase, Google planned to integrate the technology into the AdWords platform. Google paid an initial $102 million for the company.They also announced that they full purchase price could rise to $1.136 billion over three years based on performance and revenue.

February 2006 - MeasureMap

MeasureMap was a small company that developed statistics and analytics software specifically for blogs. Google acquired them on 14 February 2006. The software was incorporated into Google Analytics.

March 2006 - Upstartle

Upstartle’s online word processor Writely formed the basis for Google Docs. The acquisition was announced on 9 March 2006. Registrations were closed for a few months as the service was integrated. Google Docs now includes spreadsheet and presentation functions.

June 2006 - 2Web Technologies

Most of the Google spreadsheet software was developed by Google itself. However, on 1 June 2006 it quietly bought a company called 2Web Technologies and integrated their flagship software XL2Web into the program. As with other software, the features became free to use once it was in Google’s hands.

October 2006 - YouTube

YouTube logo

In what was probably its most famous acquisition, Google purchased video sharing site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. The two brands remain distinct and Google own “Google Video” remains in place. The statistics for YouTube are simply amazing. Although not released very often, the company did state that in 2006, 50,000 videos were being added every day.

October 2006 - JotSpot

Google acquired JotSpot on 31 October 2006. It was rebranded as Google Sites and the features became free to use. It is currently still in beta.

February 2007 - AdScpae

Google acquired AdScape on 16 February 2007. It is a small company that specialises in in-game advertising. Google stated about the deal “In-game advertising is an area where we believe Google could add a lot of value to users.” Google reportedly paid $23 million for the company.

April 2007 - DoubleClick

DoubleClick Logo

In its most expensive acquisition, Google purchased DoubleClick, a huge player in the online advertising industry, for $3.1 billion in cash. It took until 11 March 2008 for the deal to be officially closed, following an antirust hearing. Soon after the acquisition, Google announced that they would be
cutting 300 jobs from the company.

June 2007 - Feedburner

Google paid a rumoured $100 million for Feedburner on 3 June 2007. The next month the PRO features were made available for free. The company provides services for web feeds.

October 2007 - Jaiku

Jaiku Logo

Jaiku is a micro-blogging software company founded in Helsinki, Finland. It is like Twitter, but for your mobile phone. It is also more fully-featured than Twitter. New registrations remain closed and news on Google’s future plans for the platform are quite scarce.

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