Thursday, July 5, 2007
Google Acquisitions by Location
It seems like every week, there is a new Google acquistion announcement. The latest being Grand Central. So what is the drive behind the acquisition spree? Seemingly, Google has the brain power, money and PR to compete organically.
Perhaps the short answer is because they can. The more thoughtful analysis is more complex.
More Money than Time
If you compare Orkut with YouTube, there is no question the YouTube path has worked out better for Google. Instead of trying to catch market leader YouTube with Google Video, they dipped into their enormously deep pockets and took them out early.
Instant Monetization of Traffic
As Google proved with search, they know how to turn traffic into cash with their not so secret weapons AdWords and AdSense. Now with DoubleClick, this dominance in monetization of traffic should increase. Google delivers on the oldest of Internet strategies. Drive traffic & monetize. By virtue of this ability to monetize better than any Internet competitor, Google can outspend their competitors for interesting properties. Their recent wins against Microsoft (DoubleClick) and Yahoo (take your pick) when competing for interesting acquisition targets is an illustration of this unfair advantage. Feedburner is one of the recent acquistions where the monetization potential should be significant.
Strategic
Google Maps is a strategic weapon in making Google the new Yellow Pages. Seems they are well on their way to realizing this vision. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is looking to pry the productive market from Microsoft. This is still a work in progress, but there have been a number of acquisitions to accelerate this initiative.
Talent Acquisition
This is the one that I was interested in studying more. Google is like the zombies in Night of the Living Dead. They want brains. So my thought was to study if there was a unusually large percentage of acquisition near Google University (Mt. View GooglePlex). As the employment and technology markets have heated up, the thought was that Google was using their acquisition strategy to acquire raw talent. The thought was that this strategy would not have been as necessary during the pre-IPO Internet bust years. So the verdict? Not sure. Google has grown so much during the last few years, it is only natural that their appetite for acquisitions would grow proportionally.
Here's a list of the acquired companies, and their previous HQ's. The information used to create this list was found on SEO by the Sea and Wikipedia. I found a total of 44 acquisitions from 2001 through July 2007. The SEO by the Sea information is extremely in depth and interesting to look at.
BAY AREA ACQUISITIONS
1) Outride (September 2001) - Spinoff of Parc Research (Search Technology) - Redwood City
2) Pyra Labs (February 2003) - Blogger - San Francisco
3) Neotonic Software (April 2003) - Email Customer Support - San Francisco
4) Kaltix (September 2003) - Search Technology - Palo Alto, CA
5) Ignite Logic (May 2004) - Web Templates - Sacramento, CA
6) Keyhole (October 2004) - Digital Mapping (Google Maps) - Mountain View, CA
7) Zipdash (December 2004) - Maps/Traffic Info for Mobile - Palo Alto, CA
8) Android (August 2005) - Software for Mobile Phones - Palo Alto, CA
9) Measure Maps (March 2006) - Blog Tracking Analytics (Google Analytics) - SF, CA
10) Writely (March 2006) - On-Line Word Processing (Google Docs & Spreadsheets) - Bay Area 11) YouTube (October 2006) - Videos - San Bruno, CA
12) JotSpot (October 2006) - Wiki/Spreadsheet Sharing - Bay Area
13) Adscape Media (Feb 2007) - In game advertising - San Francisco, CA
14) Tonic Systems* (April 2007) - Slideshows - San Francisco, CA/Austrialia
15) Green Border Technologies (May 2007) - Sandbox Environment/Security - Mt View, CA
16) Peakstream (June 2007) - 3D Technology - Redwood Shores, CA
17) Zenter (June 2007) - Slideshows - Bay Area
18) Grand Central (June 2007) - Portable Phone # - Fremont, CA
* though Tonic is listed as dual HQ, for the purpose of this report, they are listed as a Bay Area company.
CALIFORNIA ACQUISITIONS (OUTSIDE BAY AREA)
1) Applied Semantics (April 2003) - Santa Monica, CA
2) Picasa (July 2004) - Picture Sharing - Pasadena, CA
3) Urchin Software (March 2005) - Web Analytics - San Diego, CA
4) dMarc Broadcasting (March 2005) - Radio Ads - Newport Beach, CA
5) Neven Vision (August 2006) - Biometrics - Santa Monica, CA
US ACQUISITIONS (OUTSIDE CALIFORNIA)
1) Deja.com (Feb 2001) Google Groups - Austin, TX
2) Sprinks (October 2003) - Ad Placement System - NY, NY
3) Genius Labs (October 2003) - Blogging - Boston, MA
4) Phatbits (2005) - Widget Engine - Seattle, WA
5) Dodgeball (May 2005) - Mobile Social Network - NY, NY
6) Current Communications Group (July 2005) - Broadband Internet - Germantown, MD (partial investment)
7) Transformic, Inc (September 2005) - Deep Search - Seattle, WA
8) Skia (Nov 2005) - Graphics Software Engineering - Chapel Hill, NC
9) @Last Software (March 2006) - 3D - Google Earth - Boulder, CO
10) Doubleclick (February 2007) - Display Ads - NY, NY
11) Feedburner (June 2007) - RSS - Chicago, CA
EUROPE
1) Endoxon (Dec 2006) - Mapping Solutions - Swiss
2) Gapminder's Trendanalyzer Software (March 2007) - Visual Charts - Sweden
3) Marratech AB (April 2007) - Video Conferencing - Stockholm, Sweden
4) Panaramio (June 2007) - Photos & Google Earch - Spain
AUSTRAILIA
1) Where2 Technologies (October 2004) - Mapping Software - Austrailia
2) Orion (April 2006) - Advanced Search - New South Wales, Austrailia
CANADA
1) Reqwireless (March 2006) - Mobile Application Toolkit (Waterloo, Ontario)
LATIN AMERICA
1) Akwan Information Technologies (July 2005) - Search (Orkut) - Brazil
CHINA
1) Xunlei (January 2007) - Chinese Internet Video - China - partial acquisition
UNKNOWN
1) 2web Technologies - Web-Based Spreadsheet - Couldn't identify the HQ for 2Web.
Looking at all 44 Google acquisitions is interesting as you can see how some of these pieces have evolved to gel into the current Google empire.
Google Groups, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Analytics, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, YouTube, Google Search, Google AdWords/AdSense, Blogger, Picasa, Feedburner, DoubleClick are some of the pieces you can see from this list.
It seems like every week, there is a new Google acquistion announcement. The latest being Grand Central. So what is the drive behind the acquisition spree? Seemingly, Google has the brain power, money and PR to compete organically.Perhaps the short answer is because they can. The more thoughtful analysis is more complex.
More Money than Time
If you compare Orkut with YouTube, there is no question the YouTube path has worked out better for Google. Instead of trying to catch market leader YouTube with Google Video, they dipped into their enormously deep pockets and took them out early.
Instant Monetization of Traffic
As Google proved with search, they know how to turn traffic into cash with their not so secret weapons AdWords and AdSense. Now with DoubleClick, this dominance in monetization of traffic should increase. Google delivers on the oldest of Internet strategies. Drive traffic & monetize. By virtue of this ability to monetize better than any Internet competitor, Google can outspend their competitors for interesting properties. Their recent wins against Microsoft (DoubleClick) and Yahoo (take your pick) when competing for interesting acquisition targets is an illustration of this unfair advantage. Feedburner is one of the recent acquistions where the monetization potential should be significant.
Strategic
Google Maps is a strategic weapon in making Google the new Yellow Pages. Seems they are well on their way to realizing this vision. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is looking to pry the productive market from Microsoft. This is still a work in progress, but there have been a number of acquisitions to accelerate this initiative.
Talent Acquisition
This is the one that I was interested in studying more. Google is like the zombies in Night of the Living Dead. They want brains. So my thought was to study if there was a unusually large percentage of acquisition near Google University (Mt. View GooglePlex). As the employment and technology markets have heated up, the thought was that Google was using their acquisition strategy to acquire raw talent. The thought was that this strategy would not have been as necessary during the pre-IPO Internet bust years. So the verdict? Not sure. Google has grown so much during the last few years, it is only natural that their appetite for acquisitions would grow proportionally.
Here's a list of the acquired companies, and their previous HQ's. The information used to create this list was found on SEO by the Sea and Wikipedia. I found a total of 44 acquisitions from 2001 through July 2007. The SEO by the Sea information is extremely in depth and interesting to look at.
BAY AREA ACQUISITIONS
1) Outride (September 2001) - Spinoff of Parc Research (Search Technology) - Redwood City
2) Pyra Labs (February 2003) - Blogger - San Francisco
3) Neotonic Software (April 2003) - Email Customer Support - San Francisco
4) Kaltix (September 2003) - Search Technology - Palo Alto, CA
5) Ignite Logic (May 2004) - Web Templates - Sacramento, CA
6) Keyhole (October 2004) - Digital Mapping (Google Maps) - Mountain View, CA
7) Zipdash (December 2004) - Maps/Traffic Info for Mobile - Palo Alto, CA
8) Android (August 2005) - Software for Mobile Phones - Palo Alto, CA
9) Measure Maps (March 2006) - Blog Tracking Analytics (Google Analytics) - SF, CA
10) Writely (March 2006) - On-Line Word Processing (Google Docs & Spreadsheets) - Bay Area 11) YouTube (October 2006) - Videos - San Bruno, CA
12) JotSpot (October 2006) - Wiki/Spreadsheet Sharing - Bay Area
13) Adscape Media (Feb 2007) - In game advertising - San Francisco, CA
14) Tonic Systems* (April 2007) - Slideshows - San Francisco, CA/Austrialia
15) Green Border Technologies (May 2007) - Sandbox Environment/Security - Mt View, CA
16) Peakstream (June 2007) - 3D Technology - Redwood Shores, CA
17) Zenter (June 2007) - Slideshows - Bay Area
18) Grand Central (June 2007) - Portable Phone # - Fremont, CA
* though Tonic is listed as dual HQ, for the purpose of this report, they are listed as a Bay Area company.
CALIFORNIA ACQUISITIONS (OUTSIDE BAY AREA)
1) Applied Semantics (April 2003) - Santa Monica, CA
2) Picasa (July 2004) - Picture Sharing - Pasadena, CA
3) Urchin Software (March 2005) - Web Analytics - San Diego, CA
4) dMarc Broadcasting (March 2005) - Radio Ads - Newport Beach, CA
5) Neven Vision (August 2006) - Biometrics - Santa Monica, CA
US ACQUISITIONS (OUTSIDE CALIFORNIA)
1) Deja.com (Feb 2001) Google Groups - Austin, TX
2) Sprinks (October 2003) - Ad Placement System - NY, NY
3) Genius Labs (October 2003) - Blogging - Boston, MA
4) Phatbits (2005) - Widget Engine - Seattle, WA
5) Dodgeball (May 2005) - Mobile Social Network - NY, NY
6) Current Communications Group (July 2005) - Broadband Internet - Germantown, MD (partial investment)
7) Transformic, Inc (September 2005) - Deep Search - Seattle, WA
8) Skia (Nov 2005) - Graphics Software Engineering - Chapel Hill, NC
9) @Last Software (March 2006) - 3D - Google Earth - Boulder, CO
10) Doubleclick (February 2007) - Display Ads - NY, NY
11) Feedburner (June 2007) - RSS - Chicago, CA
EUROPE
1) Endoxon (Dec 2006) - Mapping Solutions - Swiss
2) Gapminder's Trendanalyzer Software (March 2007) - Visual Charts - Sweden
3) Marratech AB (April 2007) - Video Conferencing - Stockholm, Sweden
4) Panaramio (June 2007) - Photos & Google Earch - Spain
AUSTRAILIA
1) Where2 Technologies (October 2004) - Mapping Software - Austrailia
2) Orion (April 2006) - Advanced Search - New South Wales, Austrailia
CANADA
1) Reqwireless (March 2006) - Mobile Application Toolkit (Waterloo, Ontario)
LATIN AMERICA
1) Akwan Information Technologies (July 2005) - Search (Orkut) - Brazil
CHINA
1) Xunlei (January 2007) - Chinese Internet Video - China - partial acquisition
UNKNOWN
1) 2web Technologies - Web-Based Spreadsheet - Couldn't identify the HQ for 2Web.
Looking at all 44 Google acquisitions is interesting as you can see how some of these pieces have evolved to gel into the current Google empire.
Google Groups, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Analytics, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, YouTube, Google Search, Google AdWords/AdSense, Blogger, Picasa, Feedburner, DoubleClick are some of the pieces you can see from this list.
Labels: google acquisitions
¶ 4:55 PM
