Googlified

Today the European Commission approves Google’s acquisition of internet ad serving company DoubleClick, that 11 long months after Google originally announced it and 3 months after the Federal Trade Commission OK’ed the acquisition last December.

So Google today announced that they have “officially acquired DoubleClick” and is ready to cut some people on the DoubleClick’s side. “As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect these to take place in the U.S. and possibly in other regions as well.”

The unemployment rate in the U.S. is currently at 4.8%, according to the official figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Count me in.

Wired blog Epicenter reports that Google may have bought online address book service Plaxo for around $200 million. From Plaxo’s About Page,

Plaxo provides a free service that securely updates and maintains the information in your address book. Plaxo is the universal digital assistant; available to you wherever and whenever you need it to keep you organized, on top of your life and in touch with those you care about.

Plaxo claimed to have 15 million registered users (as of September 2006), and like Google, the company is based in Mountain View, California. A partner of Google on OpenSocial, Plaxo has a service called Plaxo Pulse which “enables sharing of content from multiple different sources across the social web, including blogs, photos, social networking services, rating services, and others.” [Wikipedia] (Like FriendFeed)

They recently launched a service called Public Profiles employing Google’s Social Graph API.

The Official Google Blog announced today that they have acquired social network and micro-blogging site Jaiku.

Jaiku is an activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones. [Jaiku | Google Q&A]

Just two weeks ago, Google snapped up Zingku, a similar service. Now Google has Dodgeball, Zingku, and Jaiku.

Google revert the service back to invite-only, you can request an invitation here.

Hehe, Googling Google noticed a pattern, “Want to be bought by Google? Add ‘ku’ to your company name.” :)

Google prepares to acquire mobile social network Zingku (never heard of it? me neither).

[Zingku] is designed from the mobile phone, outward, allowing you to create and exchange things of interest ranging from invitations to “mobile flyers” with friends in a trusted manner. On the mobile phone, Zingku uses standard text messaging features that come with every phone. On the web, our service uses your standard web browser and instant messenger. There is nothing to install. [Zingku: FAQ]

Like Twitter, I suppose?

Googler Dion Almaer have done a little review on this service last December. Now it kinda convinces me that GooglePhones/gPhones do exist. Oh well, it might be just a coincidence. :)

I wonder how will the Dodgeball founders react to this. :-/

[via Google Operating System]

Earlier this year, Seeking Alpha reported that Google’s building a new data center in seaport city Eemshaven, in Groningen, Netherlands… And here it is. The finished data center will house about 100,000 servers, which are to be powered by “green power” from nearby wind farms.

This data center is probably the largest in the Netherlands (or at least it claims to be), valued at €150 million (I think) at this moment. You can find the whole set of photos on Flickr.

[photo by Erwin Boogert, used under a CC-license]

Google announced that they have acquired ImageAmerica, “a company that builds high resolution cameras for the collection of aerial imagery.”

The ImageAmerica site has been taken down by Google, but you can still find a copy of the site on Archive.org.

I bet Google paid well over $10 million for these spy-cams. :)

There’s a page on Google where you can submit the information about your business ideas, patents, or even your company so that it might get acquired for a couple million dollars.

Well, unless your idea “matches [their] current business and technology development needs”, the following automated email will be the only thing you get from them.

Thank you for your note. While we are not able to personally respond to all proposals, please be assured that we review every email we receive. If your proposal matches our current business and technology development needs, a Google representative will be in touch with you shortly. If your email is not related to business development, we encourage you to submit your message through the online contact form at [Google Support]

Oh yeah, at least try (so you won’t regret when you are broke). There might be a chance that you are going to be a Googlionaire. :)

[via Jason Shellen]

Comparing the number of new blogs Google’s been creating, I knew there would be another acquisition coming. Sure enough, Google today announced that they have acquired Postini, “a company that offers security and corporate compliance solutions for email, IM, and other web-based communications”, in Google’s word.

The acquisition will cost Google $625 million in cash, according to this FAQ Google provides. Postini will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google after the acquisition, but Google would probably use their technology to improve Google Apps’ security.

Postini already serves more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users and was one of [Google's] first Google Enterprise Partners for Google Apps.

More details about the acquisition can be found on the Official Google Blog, Google Enterprise Blog, this FAQ, and their press release on this acquisition.

related: Google Acquired GreenBorder

Google today officially announced that they have acquired GrandCentral, an online phone management service, as previously rumored.

Just before the official announcement goes alive, GrandCentral switched back to private beta and only “a limited number of users will be able to sign up for an invitation to participate in continued beta-testing of the service” until Google says “We are ready!”

As usual, Google has a FAQ page for those who are interested in the deal, so here you go.

If you are currently a user of GrandCentral but doesn’t want to have your data transferred to Google (due to privacy concern), you can discontinue your service by sending an email to support@grandcentral.com before August 1, 2007 (one month away) and they will contact you at your registered email address.

I was trying to log into my account but it says, “This account is locked. Too many failed login attempts were made. Please contact support for assistance.” That says, I am just another human being.

TechCrunch reports that Google has acquired GrandCentral, an online phone management service with a lot of cool features.

• Check your messages by phone, email, or online
• Keep all your messages online for eternity
• Quickly (and secretly) block an annoying caller
• Surprise your callers with a custom voicemail greeting
• Turn your MP3s into the ring tones your callers hear

The GrandCentral Blog says that they have redesigned their home page on June 23rd, so I do believe that there’s something going on. Plus, TechCrunch is pretty reliable on these matters. :)

Google announced today that they have acquired, yet, another online presentation creator - Zenter.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve acquired the assets of Zenter, a company that provides software for creating online slide presentations.

No FAQs of the acquisition were given out, the only things on Zenter’s website now are a Google logo, “Google has acquired Zenter. For media inquiries, please contact press@google.com”, and a couple of links to Google’s About page and Privacy Policy.

Here’s my conspiracy theory: when Google acquired Tonic System in April, they probably think that they can easily integrate the product into Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but it turned out to be way harder, “Mission Impossible”-like. So now they snap up another presentation creator to see if they can catch up with the schedule to launched their presentation service by the end of the summer.

Makes perfect sense to me. :)

[photo by Carlos Bastidas]

The Register reports that Google has acquired PeakStream, a company that produces computer performance enhance applications.

PeakStream provides a software application platform for customers who want to evolve to the next generation of high performance computing price/performance. It provides fast and easy access to the spectacular computational power of today’s high performance, industry standard stream processors, and leverages existing investments in standard tools and programming languages. [Sequoia Capital]

Without a doubt that this will be used to improve the performance of Google’s gazillion servers in their data centers across the world, to make sure nothing like this happens again.

[via Google Blogoscoped]