GOOG Acquisitions: Trendalyzer & Adscape Media

A quick heads-up on two new Google acquisitions. First, Google has announced the purchase of Gapminder’s Trendalyzer software. Second, it confirms the purchase of Adscape Media, an in-game advertising company, following rumors of a buy last month.

Trendalyzer is software that former owner Gapminder says converts "boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations." I’m not familiar with the software, but the demo Google has up looks interesting. This appears to be a remnant of an earlier informal partnership between Google and Trendalyzer to display world development information.

The software apparently used to be offered here but is no longer available. Google, in its blog post today, suggests it will return in the future:

Trendalyzer generates moving graphics and other novel effects in the display of facts, figures, and statistics in presentations. In its nimble hands, Trendalyzer views development data—such as regional income distribution or trends in global health—as literally a world of opportunity. Like Google, Gapminder strives to make information more useful, and Trendalyzer will improve any function or application in which data might be better visualized.

Gathering data and creating useful statistics is an arduous job that often goes unrecognized. We hope to provide the resources necessary to bring such work to its deserved wider audience by improving and expanding Trendalyzer and making it freely available to any and all users capable of thinking outside the X and Y axes.

Cool, I’ll look forward to trying it at a later date.

As for Adscape, this is Google’s move to put ads in video games, because as you know, anywhere you can put ads, Google wants to be. Microsoft, of course, already has advertising within its Xbox gaming platform. Google provides more information about the purchase here.

For more on the Trendalyzer purchase, see roundup coverage at Techmeme here. For more on the Adscape purchase, also see Techmeme for roundup coverage here.