Joe Sinkwitz from the Pay Loan Affiliate Blog has put together a “report card” on Google’s acquisition progress over the years. Not only does he list the date, the company and the type of product or service Google acquired, he scores each acquisition as good, bad or mixed.
It is interesting to look at. Here is a sneak peek into some of Google’s grades.
- Picasa acquired July 13, 2004 – MIXED
Bad in that they haven’t done anything with it yet, good in that they still could do a lot with it.
- Urchin Software Corporation acquired March 28, 2005 – GOOD
Google gets more user data, information is power; a recurring theme.
- Dodgeball acquired May 12, 2005 – BAD
Nothing was done with it.
- YouTube acquired November, 2006 – GOOD
This is a big ad revenue stream about to pop.
- Adscape acquired February, 2007 – GOOD
Another channel to push ads.
Joe adds his opinion on all the acquisitions to date as he says, “So far, most of the purchases, from the outsider’s point of view, were made to either bolster core search technologies, expand advertising reach, extend web accessibility value chain, or help to make sense of all the data.
Even then, the acquisitions marked “mixed” or “bad” may have synergies we simply can’t see right now, or as theorized above, were made more to acquire talent than any specific technology.”
Still pending a grade of good, bad or mixed is the acquisitions of Doubleclick and Feedburner which have yet to be completed but I predict both of those will score a GOOD grade.
