Post by Bozur on Mar 7, 2009 3:37:31 GMT -5
6 Companies Google Should Buy Right Now
techradar.com — Google wants to organise all the world's information. That's the official line, at least, but what it really wants to do is organise all the world's information and stick ads on it. It's the king of web search and search advertising, but what about the other things we do online? If Google went shopping, these are the six sites and services they... More… (Tech Industry News)
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6 companies Google should buy right now
Firms that should be at the top of Google's shopping list
FriendFeed's founders left Google to create a social media platform. If Google wants to rule social search, it might want to bring them back
Google wants to organise all the world's information.
That's the official line, at least, but what it really wants to do is organise all the world's information and stick ads on it.
It's the king of web search and search advertising, but what about the other things we do online?
If Google went shopping, these are the six sites and services they should choose to help make it even more powerful.
1. StumbleUpon
Back in 2007, eBay bought StumbleUpon for around $75million. By the end of 2008 it was rumoured to be looking for a buyer, possibly because hits are down considerably, but more likely because it didn't have a clue what to do with it. It's still an important site, though: at the time of writing it has 7.2 million members telling one another about interesting stuff they've found online.
In many respects it's the anti-Google: where Google helps you find what you're looking for, StumbleUpon finds things that you didn't know you were looking for. It also offers a different kind of advertising. StumbleUpon knows not just what you're looking at, but what interests, amuses or delights you - and that means it can offer advertisers something a bit more interesting than plain old AdWords. Lots of user data, targeted advertising: we're amazed Google hasn't snapped it up already.
2. Twitter
Google's search spiders are amazing things, but they can't do what Twitter Search does: let you see in real time what six million people are saying. Bringing Twitter into the fold could work in two ways: as a search tool in its own right, and as a way to refine web results based on 'trending' - that is, up and coming - topics people are chatting about. For Twitter users, Google could offer better reliability: while Google Mail has been up and down a bit over the last few months, you're still much more likely to see the Twitter Fail Whale than have problems with a Google site.
Twitter might be open to an approach: negotiations with Facebook for a $500m sale fell apart not because Twitter didn't like the amount being offered, but because the deal included Facebook stock that the social network was apparently valuing far too highly. According to Business Week, the offer was $100m in cash and the rest in shares, but Twitter wanted the Facebook shares to be based on their real market value, not Facebook's own valuation. Facebook didn't like that idea and the deal collapsed.
3. Valve
Everyone thought Google was buying Valve Software in September, but it didn't happen. That doesn't mean it shouldn't, though. As we argued at the time, "There's still room for an iTunes of gaming, one giant that defines an entire up-and-coming industry, and everyone's going to want to be it. Valve and its Steam service have both the content and credibility to become it, and Google is one of very few companies that could theoretically scoop up this notoriously independent firm."
The rationale still stands: Google would make money from every game sold, could rent servers to clans, could sell anonymised usage data to publishers and it could sell in-game ads, too.
4. FriendFeed
FriendFeed already knows a lot about Google: four of its founders previously worked for the big G, designing and launching products including Google Maps, Gmail and Google Groups. The service, often described as the Google of social networking, is a kind of Swiss Army Knife for the social web: you can use it to publish stuff, you can use it to have conversations with people, you can use it like Twitter, and you can use it as a search engine. The beauty of FriendFeed is that it grabs content from all the big sites you probably use already - YouTube, Digg, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and so on - and wraps it all up in a Google-style simple interface.
FriendFeed wouldn't come cheap - its founders are smart people who know just how big a deal their service could become - but would it be worth the money? We think so. Google rules Search 1.0, where we look for content in web pages, but FriendFeed has an excellent chance of ruling Search 2.0 - that is, finding social media from a myriad of sites. If we're right, that's where the money's going to be. And where there's money to be made, Google is never far behind.
5. WordPress
With Blogger largely the preserve of spammers, lunatics and your gran, the real blogging action is happening on WordPress. With 4.5 million blogs on WordPress.com and a further 5.6 million active WordPress.org users, it's a hugely popular platform - and it's also a serious traffic attractor. According to WordPress, "over 200 million people visit one or more WordPress.com blogs every month, and they view over a billion pages on those blogs." Blogger is busier, but WordPress traffic is of better quality with users including giant corporations and national newspapers.
The success of WordPress forced Google to update Blogger after a long period of inactivity, but buying it would be even better for Blogger: Google could easily upgrade its existing blogs to the WP platform, stick WordPress into Chrome (WordPress.org already takes advantage of Google Gears) and take its web publishing activities up a notch. WordPress would be a good fit with Google's various Apps, it's a damn sight better than either Blogger or Google Sites, and its plug-in and widget architecture provides a great opportunity for integration with Google's various other services, from Analytics to Calendar.
6. Last.fm
Google bought YouTube to give it a strong position in video search - the acquisition was all about the search and ultimately targeted advertising, not the content - and Last.fm would give Google a kind of PageRank for music. As with Valve, acquiring Last.fm would give Google access to enormous amounts of demographic information and data on trends that it could flog to marketers, and of course it's another way for Google to offer a search and advertising platform.
The big problem would be persuading Last.fm's owners, broadcasting giant CBS, to part with it. CBS paid $280million for Last.fm in 2007, when it had just 15 million listeners; now, it has 21 million regular users and an estimated 19 million more using it via website widgets and applications. It's a rare success story in the otherwise beleaguered music industry.
www.techradar.com/news/internet/6-companies-google-should-buy-right-now-570740