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]