Jul 16, 2010 at 2:56pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced they have acquired Metaweb. Metaweb is a search company that figures out entities and not just words. I have a video from the company explaining exactly what that means. In short, Google seems to want to explore and leverage Metaweb's technology to bolster their rich snippet initiative and Google Squared project. As you now know, Google Squared powers Google's quick answers. Google said this acquisition will help them "improve search and make the web richer and more meaningful for everyone." Here is how Google explains future improvements due to Metaweb: Type [bar [...]

Google Takes On Travel Sites, Courts Regulatory Action With ITA Acquisition

Jul 1, 2010 at 4:38pm ET by Greg Sterling

Google has signed an agreement to acquire travel reservations software company ITA. The purchase price is reportedly about $700 million. We speculated about this and the likely travel industry and potential regulatory fallout earlier this week. Google put up a site to explain and promote the deal. Indeed, Google knows it's girding for a fight and is about to do a conference call with CEO Eric Schmidt, ITA's CEO and Marissa Mayer. In addition Google PR just issued the following statement: I wanted to let you know that Google has just announced that we have signed an agreement to acquire I [...]

Google In Discussions To Buy Travel Software Company, Will FTC Ground It?

Jun 30, 2010 at 11:35am ET by Greg Sterling

Most people have never heard of ITA. However it's the dominant company that provides reservations (inventory management) software and performs other functions for the travel industry. The company's client list includes major airlines such as American and Continental as well as popular travel sites such as Kayak and Orbitz. ITA is foundational infrastructure for many of these firms. The revelation that Google has been in discussions to buy ITA is reportedly unnerving to many of those companies that use its software. According to Reuters: The concerns are so real that Kayak offered to buy I [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Acquisitions

Report: Google Buys Invite Media, Optimization And Media Buying Platform For Ad Exchanges

Jun 2, 2010 at 10:53am ET by Greg Sterling

Adding to its display media assets, Google has reportedly acquired Invite Media for an undisclosed sum. The purchase price estimate is $70 million. Invite Media's platform "Bid Manager" enables agencies and media buyers to buy across ad exchanges more efficiently. First there were ad networks, then ad exchanges to make buying across networks more efficient. And now there are so-called "demand side platforms" such as Invite that help marketers and agencies buy across exchanges to target and consolidate audiences. According to AllThingD's report, Invite will operate at "arms length" from [...]

FTC Decides Not To Block Google-AdMob Acquisition

May 21, 2010 at 12:42pm ET by Greg Sterling

The champagne is flowing in Mountain View; the FTC has declined to sue to block Google's $750 million acquisition of mobile ad network AdMob. It appears that the public-facing rationale for the decision is the entry of Apple into the mobile ad market. The FTC put out the following statement: In a statement issued today, the Commission said that although the combination of the two leading mobile advertising networks raised serious antitrust issues, the agency’s concerns ultimately were overshadowed by recent developments in the market, most notably a move by Apple Computer Inc. – th [...]

Google Ready To Rumble If FTC Sues Over AdMob

May 19, 2010 at 9:05am ET by Greg Sterling

In November, 2008 the US Department of Justice was prepared to sue Google and call the company a "monopoly" in an effort to stop the proposed search-ads deal with Yahoo. At the time Google wanted to avoid the "m-word" and didn't quite have the stomach for a public legal battle with the DOJ. Here's what General Counsel David Drummond said at the time: However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not on [...]

Google Buying The “VoIP Infrastructure” Out From Under Competitors

May 18, 2010 at 10:13am ET by Greg Sterling

Google rarely does anything with a single objective in mind. There are almost always multiple goals or possibilities involved in most of its strategic moves and acquisitions. Such is also the case with its $68 million effort to acquire Global IP Solutions (GIPS). The company, headquartered in San Francisco but publicly traded in Norway, "provides best-in-class voice and video processing in IP communications." As several others have already remarked, GIPS has a customer list that includes "Nortel, Oracle, Samsung, WebEx, Yahoo. AOL and other key players in the VoIP market." Some of the Vo [...]

Google Buys 3-D UI Maker BumpTop

May 3, 2010 at 9:42am ET by Greg Sterling

Google has bought BumpTop, a company that makes 3-D desktop UIs for the PC (Windows and Mac). The purchase amount was not disclosed of course, although the company had only raised a small amount of investor cash, less than $2 million. So figure the acquisition was less than $20 million -- probably more like $10 to $15 million at most. On to the speculative "what will Google do with BumpTop" scenarios. All the posts feverishly written last night predominantly assume that BumpTop will be used to "sex up" (as the British would say) the Android UI. There's also discussion of how it might work o [...]

Google May Buy Travel Software Provider ITA: Report

Apr 21, 2010 at 5:27pm ET by Matt McGee

Bloomberg News is reporting that Google is in discussions on what could be a $1 billion buyout of ITA Software, a company that provides reservation/information systems used by many well-known travel industry companies. Bloomberg cites "three people familiar with the matter" in its article, two of whom speculate that ITA could want up to $1 billion in a sale to Google. The sources also say that "the negotiations may not lead to a transaction." Ironically, ITA provides software that's used by Bing, presumably for its popular Bing Travel search tools. In a recent news release, ITA says its [...]

Plink: Google Buys Another Mobile Startup

Apr 12, 2010 at 9:08am ET by Greg Sterling

No FTC review here: Google has acquired Plink a UK-based startup that offers specialized visual search (or augmented reality [sort of]) for art. You take a picture of an artwork or object d'art and information appears about the artist and/or the piece. As the site makes clear, PlinkArt was simply the first in an intended build-out of visual search apps. Google has bought the company, probably for the team, to help develop Google Goggles, a promising but flawed platform/app that works only part of the time now. This acquisition and related engineering talent will no doubt improve Goggles con [...]

FTC Moving Closer To Challenging Google-AdMob Deal: Report

Apr 6, 2010 at 7:32pm ET by Matt McGee

There are more signs that federal regulators may be ready to challenge Google's purchase of AdMob, the mobile advertising company it bought for $750 million in November. The Wall Street Journal reports today that the groundwork is in place for a formal government challenge: The FTC has assembled an internal litigation team to prepare for a possible effort to block the deal, according to people familiar with the matter. It also has sent letters to several of AdMob's competitors asking them to testify in sworn statements about the potential impact of the acquisition, according to several [...]

Aardvark Acquired By Google

Feb 11, 2010 at 12:48pm ET by Barry Schwartz

TechCrunch reports Google has acquired Aardvark, a help engine, for $50 million. Aardvark allows you to ask questions, which then pushed the question out to a network of people who may be able to answer them. The answers are then sent back to you via instant message, email or even Twitter. Aardvark was created by former Googlers and hasn't taken on the traction that I expected early on. Google has not yet confirmed the acquisition. Postscript: Google sent me a statement confirming the acquisition. They said: We have signed a definitive agreement to acquire Aardvark, but we don't [...]

Google Plans To Buy Its Way Into Real Estate

Jan 16, 2010 at 12:53pm ET by Matt McGee

Google is making its intentions in the real estate vertical more clear. Speaking this week at Inman Real Estate Connect, an industry conference, Google's Sam Sebastian reportedly said: "We're actively looking to acquire one to two small real estate companies a month." (Update: We now understand that the Realtor.org blog post linked above may have misquoted Google's Sam Sebastian. Via this tweet, this attendee blog post, and a comment below, it appears Sebastian may have been referring to acquisitions in general, not specific real estate acquisitions. We'll contact Google for clarification.) [...]

With Mobile Ad Networks Being Snapped Up By Google And Apple Will Yahoo Or Microsoft Be The Next To Buy?

Jan 5, 2010 at 12:46am ET by Greg Sterling

In November, Google surprised many when it announced that it was buying mobile ad network AdMob for a massive $750 million in stock, bringing mobile advertising suddenly into the consciousness of people who'd simply not paid attention before: "Hey, maybe this thing IS for real." Now Apple is reportedly buying another tier one mobile ad network, Quattro Wireless, for $275 million. That immediately raises the question: What will Yahoo and Microsoft Do? Yahoo already is a top mobile ad network and so is Microsoft -- in both traffic and estimated revenues. Both rank in the top five in terms [...]

Google Buys Teracent, Machine Learning Display Ad Technology

Nov 23, 2009 at 1:28pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced they have purchased Teracent, a company that uses machine learning to show the different display ad creatives based on dozens of factors. Google bought them to improve and better automate the display ad side of their ad serving technology. Google said: We think that this technology has great potential to improve display advertising on the web. That's why we're pleased to announce today that we've entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Teracent. The transaction, which is subject to various closing conditions, is expected to close this quarter. This can be used to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Acquisitions

Google Starts Shopping For Businesses Again

Sep 24, 2009 at 10:07am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google CEO sees one small acquisition a month from Reuters reports Google's CEO as saying they are back in the business of acquiring businesses. He told Reuters, "acquisitions are turned on again at Google and we are doing our normal maneuvers, which is small companies." "My estimate would be one-a-month acquisitions and these are largely in lieu of hiring. There may be larger acquisitions, but they really are unpredictable," Schmidt added. Google slowed or halted all acquisitions sometime around early January of this year. Most recently, Google acquired reCAPTCHA, but you can read abou [...]

Google Acquires reCAPTCHA To Improve OCR & Rumors Of Brightcove Acquisition

Sep 16, 2009 at 3:13pm ET by Barry Schwartz

The big news is that Google has officially acquired reCAPTCHA. reCAPTCHA are those funny looking letters you see when you fill out forms, asking you to enter in the letters into a box, in order for you to validate that you are indeed a human. Why did Google buy them? Not for the CAPTCHA feature, but as a way to improve their OCR technology, the technology they use to understand scanned words. reCAPTCHA has a pretty large database of letters they collected matched to what actual humans thought those letters were. This is somewhat similar to how Google Image Labeler works, where Google [...]

Google CEO: We Considered Buying A Newspaper

May 21, 2009 at 11:06am ET by Greg Sterling

This had been reported before, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledged that Google had looked at investing in or buying a newspaper in an interview in London with the Financial Times: FT: Would you ever consider buying a newspaper; they’re cheap right now? ES: We’ve actually looked at this and we’re trying to avoid crossing the line between the infrastructure and technology that Google provides and the content that our partners provide. There is a line and we’re trying to stay on our side it. Schmidt thinks that charging for news won't work online. He cited a few exceptions for " [...]

“Heard” Mentality: Twitter In Acquisition Talks Or Not?

Apr 3, 2009 at 9:43am ET by Greg Sterling

TechCrunch reported late last night that Twitter was in late stage talks to be acquired by Google. That sent what used to be called the "blogosphere" into a frenzy. Kara Swisher, of AllThingsD, striking back against what she believes was sloppy journalism (and TechCrunch more generally), said no: In fact, Twitter and Google have simply been engaged in "some product-related discussions," according to one source, around real-time search and the search giant better crawling the microblogging service. Said a source close to Twitter: "There was a discussion with [Google executive Marissa Mayer' [...]

Google Implements ‘Orion’ Technology, Improves Search Refinements & Adds Longer Snippets

Mar 24, 2009 at 10:09am ET by Greg Sterling

Google is announcing two changes to search results this morning. The first involves the use of longer "snippets" (text extracts containing the keywords) when users input queries of three words or more. The objective is to provide more context to help the user determine if the site is worth visiting. Many search engines have attempted to address this same problem with visual tools or "previews" of one sort or another. (Vanessa will postscript with more detail about snippets.) It's difficult to predict whether or how longer snippets will affect user behavior but it may create incentives to in [...]

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