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Friday, November 16, 2007

Google Owns A Search Engine Optimization Company

A Slippery Slope: Google Owns
a Search Engine Optimization Company
================================


If you own or work with a search engine optimization company, or even if you're just hoping to better your search engine placement, then you are probably aware of the recent acquisition frenzy that took hold among the major search engines. Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, Microsoft paid $6 billion for Aquantive, and Yahoo paid $680 million for the 80 percent of Right Media that it did not already own and another $300 million for BlueLithium. The companies purchased are all intended to help widen the advertising range of each of the engines in question, and to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated behavioral-based ad-serving technologies that the acquired companies owned.

This is a listing of Google's corporate acquisitions, including acquisitions of both companies and individual products.

Acquisition Date Company/Product Business Area Value (USD) References
2001
September 20, 2001 Deja's Usenet archive Google Groups. undisclosed [1]
September 20, 2001 Outride, Inc. Spin-off from Xerox PARC. undisclosed [2]
2003
February, 2003 Pyra Labs Blogger. undisclosed [3]
April, 2003 Neotonic Software CRM technology. undisclosed [4]
April, 2003 Applied Semantics Advertising technology. $102 million [5]
September 30, 2003 Kaltix Search engine technology. undisclosed [6]
October, 2003 Sprinks Paid listings unit of Primedia. undisclosed [7]
October, 2003 Genius Labs Blogging undisclosed [8]
2004
May 10, 2004 Ignite Logic Website creation technology. undisclosed [9]
June 23, 2004 Baidu (2.6% stake) Chinese language search engine. All shares were sold in June, 2006 $5 million [10][11]
July 13, 2004 Picasa Photo management software. undisclosed [12]
October 27, 2004 Keyhole, Inc. Mapping software; used in Google Earth. undisclosed [13]
Sept.-Dec., 2004 Where2 Mapping software; used in Google Maps. undisclosed [14]
Sept.-Dec., 2004 ZipDash Used in Google Ride Finder. undisclosed [14]
2005
ca. 2005 2Web Technologies Web-based spreadsheet. undisclosed [15]
ca. 2005 Phatbits Widgets engine. undisclosed [16]
March 28, 2005 Urchin Software Corporation Web analysis. undisclosed [17]
May 12, 2005 Dodgeball Social networking. undisclosed [18]
July, 2005 Reqwireless Web browser and Mobile email. undisclosed [19]
July 7, 2005 Current Communications Group Broadband internet. $100 million (partial investment) [20]
August 17, 2005 Android Software for Handheld devices. undisclosed [21]
November, 2005 Skia Graphics software. undisclosed [22]
November 17, 2005 Akwan Information Technologies Latin American internet operations. undisclosed [23]
December 20, 2005 AOL (5% stake) Internet. $1 billion [24]
2006
January 17, 2006 dMarc Broadcasting Radio advertising software and platform. $102 million [25]
February 14, 2006 Measure Map Blog analysis. undisclosed [26]
March 9, 2006 Upstartle Writely, online word processing. undisclosed [27]
March 14, 2006 @Last Software SketchUp, 3-D modeling. undisclosed [28]
April 9, 2006 Orion Advanced search method. undisclosed [29]
August 15, 2006 Neven Vision Computer vision undisclosed [30]
October 31, 2006 JotSpot Website applications undisclosed [31]
November, 2006 YouTube Video sharing $1.65 billion [32]
December, 2006 Endoxon Mapping solutions $28 million [33]
2007
January, 2007 Xunlei (partial acquisition) Network, file-sharing. undisclosed [34]
February, 2007 Adscape Video game advertising $23 million [35]
March, 2007 Trendalyzer Software undisclosed [36]
April, 2007 Tonic Systems Presentation software undisclosed [37]
April, 2007 Marratech video conferencing software Video conferencing undisclosed [38]
May 11, 2007 GreenBorder Technologies Desktop enterprise security undisclosed [39]
June 1, 2007 Panoramio Geospatial Photo-sharing Service undisclosed [39]
June 3, 2007 FeedBurner Online RSS Feeds $100 million [40]
June 5, 2007 PeakStream Parallel Processing undisclosed [41]
June, 2007 Zenter Presentations Software undisclosed [42]
July 2, 2007 GrandCentral VOIP Phone Aggregation $45 million [43]
July, 2007 ImageAmerica High resolution aerial cameras undisclosed [44]
July 9, 2007 Postini Communications Security $625 million [45]
September, 2007 Zingku Mobile social network and communication platform undisclosed [46]
October, 2007 Jaiku An activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones undisclosed [47]

Pending acquisitions

==========================

Pending acquisition means that the purchase was confirmed, but not executed yet. The execution can take from several days to several months depending on the size and position of the two involved companies and on the impact of the acquisition on the market place. Even if both companies agree on the deal this does not mean that it will actually happen. In some cases regulatory approvals by 3rd parties are required (e.g. government). The deal goes bust if the required approvals cannot be obtained.

Acquisition Date Company/Product Business Area Value (USD) References
2007
April 13, 2007 DoubleClick Online Advertising $3.1 billion [48]


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