Google buys Pyra Labs

Argyle writes "SiliconValley.com reports that Google has bought Pyra Labs. Pyra Labs is the creator of the Blogger software and runs the blogger.com and blogspot.com services. In weblog fashion, founder Evan Williams reported the news on his weblog in the middle of the Live from the Blogosphere event."

Comments

I think

[mrpuffypants]

This has the potential to be huge... Google Blogs..

Not only could you search the Internet, but you could refine your searches just to other people's thoughts, etc.

Mark another one up for Google being one of the best tech companies in the business world.

Re:I think

[c.emmertfoster]

As though you couldn't already search within a particular domain using Google.

Look, Google is a great search engine, but that doesn't mean that everything it touches turns to gold. It's not "the next big thing," nor is it a silly buzzword that you can bander around randomly.

Re:I think

[jesdynf]

If you sit down and look at it, Google's "things touched/things that are 24-karat gold" ratio is exceptional.

They did this for a reason. I can think of many cool things they could do with this. They, I'm pretty sure, can think up more.

I'm going to make a guess -- backed up, mind, by both their past performance and the general attitude that they exhibit -- that whatever they're up to -will be- the next big thing.

Or something that darn well could've -been- the next big thing and deserved to be explored.

Re:I think

[jesdynf]

If you don't have any idea what they're going to be doing with it, what business do you have reproaching it?

Based on their past performance...

Google image search? Hoo yeah.

Maps, phonebooks, toolbar, search-term
spellchecker? Good ideas all, if not earthshattering, but it shows a consistent effort to improve the utility and relevance of their product.

Google News? Big pluses here.

Google Answers? Heh. Okay. But like I said, it deserved to be explored.

Google AdWords? They found -advertising- that -doesn't suck-. Yeesh. What does it take to impress you? ... based on that, they're up to something that bears close attention. I can't speak to the -profitability- of it, but they're still here, at least.

If your opinion differs, so be it, but I'm not sure you're basing it on -anything- other than reflexive avoidance of a perceived agenda.

just me or ..

[josh crawley]

Is it just me or does it seem that Google is trying to become the number 1 information portal?

Re:just me or ..

[c.emmertfoster]

No, you're missing my point entirely. Google is not just starting out, and Google is not "another upstart portal wannabe."

Yahoo, as an example of a portal site, uses Google as a web-searching tool. Frankly, I don't see why Google would want to move towards being a portal site, when that niche is already filled by a number of quality sites.

I hope this works out for the good.

[sawilson]

It would be nice if the overall impact of this is
more even more people participating because of the
google tie-in. It would be very very nice if it got
so big that all kinds of news that our mostly
corporate influenced media didn't report on got out
and about and all around. I hope this turns into
one very huge good thing.

Re:Nothing so big

[LinuxXPHybrid]

> Webblogging will reach its limits soon, since not everyone is eager to put something out there.

As of today, blogging population is quite small (considering the size of the general internet users). But what if blogging becomes one of common features that free directory service offers? Typical directory service today is just email and maybe address book you might get home page address, but that's it. No blogging (typically). What if blogging becomes widely available? AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, and all these crap providers offer blogging? People want to express their thoughts and opinions. It's just that stuff like making web page was too damn hard for most people to express their thoughts and opinions and also it was difficult to communicate with others. Blogging is much easier. It has potential (I think).

Buying and selling the wisdom of the masses

[mateub]

Google seems to be establishing a pattern with this purchase.

They bought Deja News, or whatever it was called, giving them direct access to the wisdom of the masses, as encoded in newsgroups. Except that newsgroups seem to be a fading concept, supplanted by mailing lists and blogs. Well, Google can't very well buy mailing lists (from whom would you buy them?) but they just bought most of the blogs. Note that they haven't bought or apparently even tried to buy any traditional mass-media company (CNN, NY Times, Knight-Ridder, etc). In the business world, nobody has placed much value so far on the collected, shared knowledge of the masses, so Google can buy Deja and Pyra for cheap.

The big question is what owning the major information conduits of the masses gets Google. Google didn't just buy Atrios or Dave Barry, they bought the medium everyone is using to blog.

This kind of gets me back to an idea I blogged about a little while back--that you could probably make a business out of aggregating blogs into an ersatz net magazine and selling advertising space on the result. Google presents the advertisers with the combined traffic of the top 20 blogs, shows them a prototype of a salon-style magazine and asks how much they'd pay for ad space, then goes to those top 20 blogs and asks them whether they'd agree to publish regularly in exchange for some (smallish) cut of the ad revenue.

Makes me wonder how long we have until Google buys LiveJournal...

adeu,
Mateu