Homework1

1. List the companies Google acquired year by year. Briefly describe the strategic implications of each acquisition.

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

Acquisition Date	Company/Product	Business Area & Their Technologies	Value (USD)
September 20, 2001	Deja's Usenet archive	Google Groups.	undisclosed
September 20, 2001	Outride, Inc.	Spin-off from Xerox PARC.	undisclosed
February, 2003	Pyra Labs	Blogger.	undisclosed
April, 2003	Neotonic Software	CRM technology.	undisclosed
April, 2003	Applied Semantics	Advertising technology.	$102 million
September 30, 2003	Kaltix	Search engine technology.	undisclosed
October, 2003	Sprinks	Paid listings unit of Primedia.	undisclosed
October, 2003	Genius Labs	Blogging	undisclosed
May 10, 2004	Ignite Logic	Website creation technology.	undisclosed
June 23, 2004	Baidu (2.6% stake)	Chinese language search engine. All shares were sold in June, 2006[10][11]	$5 million
July 13, 2004	Picasa	Photo management software.	undisclosed
October 27, 2004	Keyhole, Inc.	Mapping software; used in Google Earth.	undisclosed
October 2004	Where2	Mapping software; used in Google Maps.	undisclosed
Sept.-Dec., 2004	ZipDash	Used in Google Ride Finder.	undisclosed
ca. 2005	2Web Technologies	Web-based spreadsheet.	undisclosed
ca. 2005	Phatbits	Widget engine.	undisclosed
March 28, 2005	Urchin Software Corporation	Web analysis.	undisclosed
May 12, 2005	Dodgeball	Social networking.	undisclosed
July, 2005	Reqwireless	Web browser and Mobile email.	undisclosed
July 7, 2005	Current Communications Group	Broadband internet.	$100 million (partial investment)
August 17, 2005	Android (mobile phone platform)	Software for Handheld devices.	undisclosed
November, 2005	Skia	Graphics software.	undisclosed
November 17, 2005	Akwan Information Technologies	Latin American internet operations.	undisclosed
December, 2005	allPAY GmbH, bruNET GmbH	Mobile Solution Provider, Germany.	undisclosed
December 20, 2005	AOL (5% stake)	Internet.	$1 billion
January 17, 2006	dMarc Broadcasting	Radio advertising software and platform.	$102 million
February 14, 2006	Measure Map	Blog analysis.	undisclosed
March 9, 2006	Upstartle	Writely, online word processing.	undisclosed
March 14, 2006	@Last Software	SketchUp, 3-D modeling.	undisclosed
April 9, 2006	Orion	Advanced search method.	undisclosed
August 15, 2006	Neven Vision	Computer vision	undisclosed
October 31, 2006	JotSpot	Website applications	undisclosed
November, 2006	YouTube	Video sharing (San Bruno, CA)	$1.65 billion
December, 2006	Endoxon	Mapping solutions	$28 million
January, 2007	Xunlei (partial acquisition)	Network, file-sharing.	undisclosed
February, 2007	Adscape	Video game advertising	$23 million
March, 2007	Trendalyzer	Software	undisclosed
April, 2007	Tonic Systems	Presentation software	undisclosed
April, 2007	Marratech video conferencing software	Video conferencing (Stockholm, Sweden)	undisclosed
April 13, 2007	DoubleClick	Online Advertising	$3.1 billion
May 11, 2007	GreenBorder Technologies	Desktop enterprise security	undisclosed
June 1, 2007	Panoramio	Geospatial Photo-sharing Service	undisclosed
June 3, 2007	FeedBurner	RSS Feeds (Chicago, IL)	$100 million
June 5, 2007	PeakStream	Parallel Processing	undisclosed
June, 2007	Zenter	Presentations Software	undisclosed
July 2, 2007	GrandCentral	VOIP Phone Aggregation (Fremont, CA)	$45 million
July, 2007	ImageAmerica	High resolution aerial cameras	undisclosed
July 9, 2007	Postini	Communications Security (San Carlos, CA)	$625 million
September, 2007	Tusli	Google Blogger Api Engineering Team	undisclosed
September, 2007	Zingku	Mobile social network and communication platform	undisclosed
October, 2007	Jaiku	An activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones (Helsinki)	undisclosed

Reference from: Wikipedia

2. Summarize the What Is Web 2.0 by Tim O'Reilly in one page.

In exploring the seven principles below, we've highlighted some of the principal features of Web 2.0. Each of the examples we've explored demonstrates one or more of those key principles, but may miss others. Let's close, therefore, by summarizing what we believe to be the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:

• Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability

• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them

• Trusting users as co-developers

• Harnessing collective intelligence

• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service

• Software above the level of a single device

• Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

For more information: What was it that made us identify one application or approach as "Web 1.0" and another as "Web 2.0"? We began trying to tease out the principles that are demonstrated in one way or another by the success stories of web 1.0 and by the most interesting of the new applications.

1. The Web As Platform--Like many important concepts, Web 2.0 doesn't have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core. Some comparisons as followings.

Case 1: Netscape vs. Google

Case 2: DoubleClick vs. Overture and AdSense

Case 3: Akamai vs. BitTorrent

2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence--One of the most highly touted features of the Web 2.0 era is the rise of blogging. One of the things that has made a difference is a technology called RSS. RSS is the most significant advance in the fundamental architecture of the web since early hackers realized that CGI could be used to create database-backed websites.

3. Data is the Next Intel Inside--Every significant internet application to date has been backed by a specialized database: Google's web crawl, Yahoo!'s directory (and web crawl), Amazon's database of products, eBay's database of products and sellers, MapQuest's map databases, Napster's distributed song database. As Hal Varian remarked in a personal conversation last year, "SQL is the new HTML." Database management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies, so much so that we have sometimes referred to these applications as "infoware" rather than merely software.

4. End of the Software Release Cycle--As noted above in the discussion of Google vs. Netscape, one of the defining characteristics of internet era software is that it is delivered as a service, not as a product. This fact leads to a number of fundamental changes in the business model of such a company: 1. Operations must become a core competency. 2. Users must be treated as co-developers.

5. Lightweight Programming Models--1. Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems. 2. Think syndication, not coordination. 3. Design for "hackability" and remixability. Another key web 2.0 principle, which we call "innovation in assembly." When commodity components are abundant, you can create value simply by assembling them in novel or effective ways.

6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device-- One other feature of Web 2.0 that deserves mention is the fact that it's no longer limited to the PC platform. In his parting advice to Microsoft, long time Microsoft developer Dave Stutz pointed out that "Useful software written above the level of the single device will command high margins for a long time to come."

7. Rich User Experiences--The competitive opportunity for new entrants is to fully embrace the potential of Web 2.0. Companies that succeed will create applications that learn from their users, using an architecture of participation to build a commanding advantage not just in the software interface, but in the richness of the shared data.