Google is one of several big companies operating today that has a penchant for buying up many unexpected properties in cyberspace. The company spends billions purchasing companies and technologies and then, to all appearances, doing nothing with them.
Here's the skinny on some of the big-dollar purchases that Google has made recently and where they are now.
Aardvark
You may have heard of this one or you may not have. It's a social question-and-answer forum where users can ask questions and other users can respond if they have an answer. Originally, it was a small startup with a website, a couple of employees, and not much else. When Google purchased them in 2010 for $50 million, the news hardly even made a blip.
Today, the only changes that seem to have happened since the purchase is that Aardvark was absorbed into Google Labs and is now integrated with Gmail Chat. Otherwise, it's just sat for 18 months with little change or improvement.
Jambool
A sort of social-centred version of PayPal, this services was bought up for $70M in 2010. Google has now announced that it will be shutting the service down in favour of its own in-house development that works along the same lines. It's likely that Google only purchased this property for its intellectual ownership of some payment system patents.
Like.com
This is a visual search platform that paralleled some of the technology that Google was rumoured to be working on in-house. Immediately after paying $100 (or more) million for the company, Google sent the Like.com development machine off to work on women's fashion portal Boutiques.com. Huh?
dMarc
This was a 2006 acquisition that Google paid a huge $102 million for. Many in the industry questioned the relevance of purchasing a grandpa-generation technology (a system for placing ads on radio networks) and what Google could possibly gain from it. Turns out, the critics were right on this one and Google shut it down without making a cent from it in 2009.
Have There Been Winners?
Yes, Google has purchased a lot of property that has turned out to have been a huge success, with some even becoming defining technologies for the search giant. YouTube, Applied Semantics (AdSense), DoubleClick, Android, Postini (which made Gmail what it is today), and FeedBurner were all purchases Google made that have paid off big time.
In fact, compared to other acquisition giants like Microsoft and Apple, Google has been downright frugal with their purchases of new tech companies and startups. Both of these companies have squandered billions on acquisitions that washed out with no return quickly.
In fact, quite often when two or all three of these big boys get together in an eBay-style bidding frenzy of a property, it can be quite entertaining to watch. The recent bidding war over Groupon is a great example of that in action.
Here's the skinny on some of the big-dollar purchases that Google has made recently and where they are now.
Aardvark
You may have heard of this one or you may not have. It's a social question-and-answer forum where users can ask questions and other users can respond if they have an answer. Originally, it was a small startup with a website, a couple of employees, and not much else. When Google purchased them in 2010 for $50 million, the news hardly even made a blip. Today, the only changes that seem to have happened since the purchase is that Aardvark was absorbed into Google Labs and is now integrated with Gmail Chat. Otherwise, it's just sat for 18 months with little change or improvement.
Jambool
A sort of social-centred version of PayPal, this services was bought up for $70M in 2010. Google has now announced that it will be shutting the service down in favour of its own in-house development that works along the same lines. It's likely that Google only purchased this property for its intellectual ownership of some payment system patents.
Like.com
This is a visual search platform that paralleled some of the technology that Google was rumoured to be working on in-house. Immediately after paying $100 (or more) million for the company, Google sent the Like.com development machine off to work on women's fashion portal Boutiques.com. Huh?
dMarc
This was a 2006 acquisition that Google paid a huge $102 million for. Many in the industry questioned the relevance of purchasing a grandpa-generation technology (a system for placing ads on radio networks) and what Google could possibly gain from it. Turns out, the critics were right on this one and Google shut it down without making a cent from it in 2009.
Have There Been Winners?
Yes, Google has purchased a lot of property that has turned out to have been a huge success, with some even becoming defining technologies for the search giant. YouTube, Applied Semantics (AdSense), DoubleClick, Android, Postini (which made Gmail what it is today), and FeedBurner were all purchases Google made that have paid off big time.
In fact, compared to other acquisition giants like Microsoft and Apple, Google has been downright frugal with their purchases of new tech companies and startups. Both of these companies have squandered billions on acquisitions that washed out with no return quickly.
In fact, quite often when two or all three of these big boys get together in an eBay-style bidding frenzy of a property, it can be quite entertaining to watch. The recent bidding war over Groupon is a great example of that in action.
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