Googlified

Arizona State University is running a survey asking whether its students would like to test-drive and provide feedback for an “exciting project” by “a major internet company”. Some of the questions kinda revealed that company to be Google (”Do you have a Gmail account?” and “Are you willing to sign a [NDA]?” - a common practice of Google) and this project is likely to be a 3D social network, like Second Life, as many speculated.

I don’t know, it sounds a little creepy to me.

[screenshots by it5five, via Google Blogoscoped]

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. :)

Michael Arrigington of TechCrunch said that the rumors about Google acquiring FeedBurner “are accurate and are now confirmed according to a source close to the deal.” If this is true, then the acquisition will cost Google $100 million in cash. That would be about $236 per publisher.

If the deal is for real, I think Google is probably interested more in FeedBurner’s advertising program than its technology.

In a recent post on FON’s blog (the wifi business that partners with Google), the FON founder and CEO, Martin Varsavsky says that “Gmail will soon be of unlimited capacity and its great to have all your e mail in one site including your old e mail”.

Including old email? Is that mean everyone can upload the old emails to Gmail? Does the CEO of FON knows something that we don’t? (likely)

side note: Yahoo! Mail offers unlimited storage to its users starting in May.

Rumors never have an end. The Alarm:Clock says that Google is negotiating to acquire job search engine Simply Hired, calling the company “almost seems like it was built to be acquired by Google”.

By the way, I need to get a Summer job. Seriously.

Red Herring reports that Google and AdScape came up with an agreement for the acquisition that has been rumoring around for about month. The deal would cost Google $23 million, says a person familiar with the matter.

Whatever happens, it has a little to do with me. (Not a big fan of gaming)

Let’s have some background information about SpaceShipOne first…

SpaceShipOne was developed by Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan’s aviation company, in their Tier One program, without government funding. On June 21, 2004, it made the first privately-funded human spaceflight, and on October 4, it won the $10-million Ansari X Prize, by reaching 100 kilometers in altitude twice in a two-week period with the equivalent of three people on board, with no more than ten percent of the non-fuel weight of the spacecraft replaced between flights. Development costs were estimated to be $25-million, funded largely by Paul Allen.

Once again, this rumor started over at TechCrunch. Michael Arrington said that “Google has acquired SpaceShipOne and is putting it inside building 43” at Googleplex. He also note that Google is having some constructions over at building 43, as you can see on this Flickr. This could be true, since SpaceShipOne is packing up today, for some UNKNOWN reasons(transfering to Googleplex, perhaps). Hmm, don’t forget that the Google Duo are among the richest people in the world.

After Google bought YouTube, I think there’s nothing impossible(just an expression). So I wouldn’t say ValleyWag is making things up…

GOOG is looking at Facebook at a 2.3bil price. This could be a total joke on their part, but the source is solid.

Rumor say that Facebook is making over $1 million per week, this would be a nicer deal that YouTube, in my opinion. What do you think?

By the way, “What else can $1.65B get you?“

There’s a rumor going on saying that Google will acquire YouTube for roughly $1.6 billion. The rumor first started at TechCrunch then the blogs follow, and now, Wall Street Journal says that “Google Is in Talks to Buy YouTube“. Both YouTube’s and Google’s spokesman did not comment on this rumor.

In my opinion, there will be no video deal between these two companies, the only deal would be AdSense, like the MySpace + Google. Yeah, YouTube has more users(20 million/month) than Google Videos and more videos(65,000 uploads/day), but, there’s so many copyright issues going on.

After launching Page Creator, Notebook, Spreadsheets and buying Writely, then here comes a rumor that Google is going to buy an online presentation builder, Thumbstacks, from the NY-based Structured Data, LLC. I checked it out a couple days ago and it’s awesome! You can choose to share it or make it private, and you can even download it! [via InformationWeek]

check out my sample presentation | techcrunch it