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Google Acquires Dodgeball
kalki writes "Dodgeball.com, a service that uses mobile phones to help people meet up with friends who are in the same location, said on its website on Wednesday that it has been bought by Web search leader Google Inc. Also available on the official site is a Q&A about the deal." From the article: "As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken dodgeball about a far as we can alone. Since we finished grad school, we've been trying to figure out how to grow dodgeball and make it a better service along the way. We talked to a lot of different angel investors and venture capitalists, but no one really 'got' what we were doing - that is until we met Google."
We talked to a lot of different angel investors and venture capitalists, but no one really 'got' what we were doing - that is until we met Google."
I think what he's really saying is "We begged but no one offered us any money... until we met Google."
Trolling is a art,
If you're searching Google to find out where your friends are hanging out, perhaps technological integration isn't exactly your biggest problem.
I am concerned, however, about the infrastructure of society being in the hands of a company.
That is exactly what Microsoft wants, in my opinion, and in that respect, Google and MS are identical.
That's exactly what every company wants but they want to do it in a way where their customers pay out the ass for it. People support Google because it's "free" (free as in I gave out my personal habbits to the lowest bidder so I could see maps for free).
If you don't know where your friends are -- they aren't your friends.
I'd say, if you've got so few friends you know where all of them are at any given moment, THEN you are a geek.
Strong words for an old-timer like you. You should know better. Did you buy that ID on eBay?
This is far from an egregious error. If it fails, it fails. If it succeeds, they reap the rewards. What are the chances of a business model such as this one failing? At this point, much lower than before. Apparently there were other idiots already using the service, but as soon as Google ties this system into their existing Hello, Picassa, and (possibly) future IM client, I believe potential is just oozing. There is no bigger gadget money-maker out there than cell phones. iPods are a distant second. And the high school/young college market is teeming with kids willing to pay for an inexpensive, unneeded service just like this. If it's free though, and it keeps them using Google services and so forth, how can this lose?
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I remember when personal computers were just finding a niche in business, and your choices were an x86 running DOS and a Mac. For us DOS guys, MS was this amazing Sorcerer's Tower in Redmond that kept coming up with newer, better office and personal apps. And we watched in awe as the graphics programs for Windows began to nose up on their Mac counterparts (if not their user base). MS was Great!
Then, somewhere along the line, circa early-mid 90's, somebody looked up and realized how pervasive they were. The Novell and WordPerfect satellites had been completely absorbed into the ever-burgeoning and hungry DeathStar they orbited, and even our phones, PDAs, TV set-top boxes, and browsers began to sport the Brand of the Beast. The backlash began, but the tide was unstem-able. We had become a Microsoft Nation, save for a few cells of Linux revolutionaries and a Mac sub-culture that, by its own choice, would not breed and so could not be counted upon in the long haul.
I am often reminded of the affection I and so many others had for MS 15 years ago, seeing it mirrored here daily in the gushing PR presented as "reporting" on the front page of slashdot. But MS brokered only tools, no matter how empowered those tools made us feel. Google brokers knowledge, and if we don't monitor their growth at least as cynically as we do that of Microsoft, we are fools.