Rumor: Google To Acquire Plaxo

Wired says that Google is rumored to be buying Plaxo for roughly $200 million. The company was founded in 2001 as a tool to manage contacts and users’ email address books (“your address book for life”). Its aggressive customer acquisition strategy (read: spam) alienated many would-be users. Plaxo has been more restrained in the recent past and has tried to reinvent itself as a social network with the launch of Pulse last summer.

If the rumor is true, Google would likely integrate Plaxo functionality into its Docs suite of applications aimed at enterprise users. By contrast, Pulse could be joined with Orkut or become the backbone of a new, expanded Google Profiles. It remains to be seen.

Plaxo still has a largely negative reputation among many people and it would thus be interesting if Google were actually buying the company. On the other hand, it’s a very cheap social network (relatively speaking) and is well integrated with Google’s OpenSocial platform.

ValleyWag claims this purported deal is partly motivated by Google’s desire to keep Joseph Smarr, Plaxo’s chief platform architect, and “his” technology “out of Facebook’s hands.”

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes about the connections between digital and offline commerce. He previously held leadership roles at LSA, The Kelsey Group and TechTV. Follow him Twitter or find him on LinkedIn.