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.