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) |
Deja's Usenet archive | undisclosed | ||
Outride, Inc. | Spin-off from Xerox PARC. | undisclosed | |
February, 2003 | undisclosed | ||
April, 2003 | Neotonic Software | CRM technology. | undisclosed |
April, 2003 | Applied Semantics | Advertising technology. | $102 million |
Kaltix | Search engine technology. | undisclosed | |
Sprinks | Paid listings unit of Primedia. | undisclosed | |
Genius Labs | undisclosed | ||
Ignite Logic | Website creation technology. | undisclosed | |
Baidu (2.6% stake) | Chinese language search engine. All shares were sold in June, 2006[10][11] | $5 million | |
Photo management software. | undisclosed | ||
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 | undisclosed | |
Web analysis. | undisclosed | ||
undisclosed | |||
July, 2005 | Reqwireless | Web browser and Mobile email. | undisclosed |
Current Communications Group | $100 million (partial investment) | ||
Software for Handheld devices. | undisclosed | ||
November, 2005 | Skia | Graphics software. | undisclosed |
Akwan Information Technologies | Latin American internet operations. | undisclosed | |
Mobile Solution Provider, Germany. | undisclosed | ||
AOL (5% stake) | $1 billion | ||
Radio advertising software and platform. | $102 million | ||
Blog analysis. | undisclosed | ||
Writely, online word processing. | undisclosed | ||
@Last Software | SketchUp, 3-D modeling. | undisclosed | |
Advanced search method. | undisclosed | ||
Neven Vision | undisclosed | ||
Website applications | undisclosed | ||
November, 2006 | Video sharing (San Bruno, CA) | $1.65 billion | |
December, 2006 | Mapping solutions | $28 million | |
January, 2007 | Xunlei (partial acquisition) | Network, file-sharing. | undisclosed |
February, 2007 | $23 million | ||
March, 2007 | undisclosed | ||
April, 2007 | Presentation software | undisclosed | |
April, 2007 | Marratech video conferencing software | Video conferencing (Stockholm, Sweden) | undisclosed |
Online Advertising | $3.1 billion | ||
GreenBorder Technologies | Desktop enterprise security | undisclosed | |
Geospatial Photo-sharing Service | undisclosed | ||
RSS Feeds (Chicago, IL) | $100 million | ||
Parallel Processing | undisclosed | ||
Presentations Software | undisclosed | ||
VOIP Phone Aggregation (Fremont, CA) | $45 million | ||
High resolution aerial cameras | undisclosed | ||
Communications Security (San Carlos, CA) | $625 million | ||
Google Blogger Api Engineering Team | undisclosed | ||
Mobile social network and communication platform | undisclosed | ||
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
