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Who Will Google Buy Next?
Androsynth writes "Kuro5hin is running an article entitled Who Will Google Buy Next?, which features a list of all Google's previous buyouts and some interesting suggestions for the future." A Google-buyout betting pool seems in order.
I'll put google.com(r) tattoo's all over me for $$ , they could buy me ;)
Slashdot of course. Imagine all the searchable insightful posts.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I wrote the article for K5. Hope you like it!
"All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss." - Douglas Adams
"Feel Lucky ?"
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
Buy me! Buy me! I promise I'll be good, and I don't eat much, I swear! I'll be ever so greatful! Puh-leasssssee? I'll be your friend!
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
where does google want to go today?
or
"640 buyouts ought to be enough for anybody"
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Go ahead.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Well, if they buy out the bookie taking google-buyout bets, they are sure to win...
Dodgeball - Google acquired this two-person cell phone social networking company in May 2005. The company was looking for investors, and Google apparently fit the bill. So far, nothing has happened with this company, but it will probably have something to do with Google Mobile.
Google Mobile? So are they making cell phones or something? I'm confused.
Buzznet - Yahoo! beat Google to the punch by acquiring Flickr, one of my candidates in the first draft of this article. Like Flickr, Buzznet is a photo hosting and sharing service that features unique tagging features. It is possible to browse by tag and see all sorts of interesting stuff. Buzznet would probably jibe with Picasa's Hello photo posting service, perhaps include some sort of photo-Blogger, and integrate well with Orkut.
I think this would do very well and could be a competitor to Imageshack.us. I also think they would integrate it w/ Picasa probably and Blogger.
Monster - Monster is the most popular job search site. Some bloggers have tossed this idea around, touting various forms of integration with other Google services. They also mention that Yahoo! owns HotJobs. However, one wonders whether Google is interested in this market at all.
Hmm...that'd be interesting to see
Anyone seen Epic? Epic is a mock 'history' presentation on Google from the POV of 2015. It's quite interesting and while the idea of this is creepy it'd be cool at the same time.
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
All Book publishers so they can do that book searching thing sans lawyers. Finally, the day will come when we can read War & Peace and have direct links to shop for it on Ebay.
I thought the Oracle had foretold the destiny of Google in EPIC!!! What's going on?! Is the world going crazy?!
/joke
Apple and Intel. The new company will be called Apoogtel, or Ingoople, or Super Google.
Slashdot posts so many Google articles anyway, might as well drop the act and go all the way.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Don't worry. In capitalism it's a matter of time before all companies merge together or get bought out with just a few big companies left in the end. Look at the auto industry. MS-Googlemart-Amazonhat, here they come.
Skype.
I think VoIP is about to hit a tipping point and Google can cash in on it quick by acquiring Skype. Get rid of the stupid name, bring on some Google quality branding and user experience and people will be bidding on eBay for accounts just like Okurit and gMail. The Google brand and marketing power can bring Skype the thing that any network needs to succeed- users.
It would be a very inexpensive acquisition for Google and it would add a sort of voice infastructure into the entire Google range of products.
Who is Google gonna buy?
Well, it should be obvious--they've stated that they're going to cruise around downtown in a van, so it sounds like they're going to start buying hookers.
This is probably the first significant indicator of evil...
Google will build the new stadium in NYC and name it The Googleplex.
Google should buy zombo.com
You heard it here first.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
You only partner when you can't afford to beat or buy. Google shouldn't be doing that for quite some time - they've got cash, and they've got talent, and they've got the time to use both.
Vobbo: Video Blogs
Goorgle -- Dental hygenist search engine.
Smithsoogle -- the library digitization project gone insane.
Google Bitches -- Like friendster but for pimps.
Google Jobs -- nope, not what you think...it's actually Steve Jobs since his soul seems to be up for sale lately.
Google.gov -- DHS meets Patriot Act meets all your data. Pledge your allegiance, boys, and come to grips with the fact that we're all screwed.
Makes sense, the cash cow that is MySpace is crashing under its own load. Imagine Google purchasing it, cleaning up the code, replacing the flash ads with small text based ones, and integrating it with Gmail. A personals site is really the only thing all of the other portals have that Google does not.
The World is Yours.
OK, that epic thing was scary as fuck. HJ
1) CraigsList
2) EBay
They must really appreciate all the free business advice they are getting.
There is a place where you get money for guessing something like this. It's called the stock market
MSFT total equity, Q3 2005: $47.4B
GOOG Market Capitalization, 06/14/2005: $77.3B
It would be a really, REALLY difficult thing for MSFT to buy out GOOG. Esp since that wouldn't really give them ownership of the company, as the outstanding shares don't add up to 50% if I recall correctly.
Nokia is Finnish, not American.
What do Saddam Hussain and Little Miss Muffet have in common? They have Kurds in their Whey.
You forgot Keyhole. I think they read Snow Crash.
It seems like they are imagining a free (to the user) all-knowledge-and-communication-anywhere brought to you by anonymous infrastructure. The problem with their scheme is its all based on advertising. Bleagh.
Reminds me of something my bio-dad encountered while working at Radio Shack.
A guy walks in, and he's looking for an expensive piece of equipment for his home entertainment sytem. He tells my dad, "I don't want any of this 'Made in Mexico' crap. I want something American. Like Sony."
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"Whom Will Google Buy Next?"
Really. "Whom". It's not so hard.
With a P/E of 110, GOOG buying anything huge (like ebay) would be similar to AOL buying Time Warner. We saw what happened there, all of the irrational exuberance of the dot coms crashing and AOL becoming a shadow of itself and becoming a subsidiary of it's purchasee.
Not that GOOG isn't profitable (and only will go up up in the future thanks to their BRILLIANT, calculated moves) but it's probably WAY overpriced right now. eBay on the other hand makes money from so many ways through it's auction service and float money from Paypal plus eBay has had the time to be subjected to market correction.
GOOG stock is set to be corrected to reality anytime now. It's gonna be ripe for the shorting soon.
Dude! When was the last time you took an IQ test?
Tivo.
Well, why not ?
Google could unleashing searching on the DVR's. This would allow users to just input a search term and have it record all episodes that the term returned in results. Who needs the TV guides or tvtome anymore ?
I'm not the only who predicts it -
[flash video] http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/
Microsoft has a market cap of $274bn
They also have close to $40bn in cash.
They could easily put together a half cash, half shares offer for Google at a very good price.
You are not comparing like with like - shareholders equity and market cap are altogether different things. In any case smaller companies can buyout bigger ones, by paying with shares in the combined business - however that is not necessary here.
Where you may be right is that Google is too closely held to be easy to buy - a few big shareholders could block any bid. Incidentally you mean free float where you say outstanding shares.
Yeah, that's a very interesting one. Sensis is quite fascinating in and of itself. There's been a lot of talk that parent company Telstra (Australia's half-government-owned telecommunications near-monopoly behemoth -- think the Aussie equivalent of AT+T before the break-up) wants to sell off Sensis as it's worth a mint and is a quick way to inject some cash. Maybe Google would want part/all of it?
Sensis has a few businesses that seem to 'fit' google to varying degrees:
The biggest reasons Google wouldn't buy Sensis? One, it's way too regional. It's basically Australia-only (Australia + New Zealand in some cases) which doesn't seem to fit that well with Google's history -- that particularly affects the CitySearch and White/Yellow Pages businesses, I'd say (the others could probably be rolled out elsewhere -- the concepts are sound). Secondly, Telstra has a new incoming chief exec, American Solomon Trujillo (ex-Orange and US West) whose early musings would seem to imply he likes the whole 'near-monopoly behemoth' thing, not the 'selling off parts for a cash injection' thing.
Still, interesting thought.
But, there are some circumstances where larger businesses are not necessarily inefficient, and the Internet is one of these.
But if you're looking for an example of smaller businesses succeeding, then opening up the local yellow pages (or, God forbid, going outside) will give you plenty.
...but is it art?
Think about it, get a google card, they inspect your buying habits like email with gmail. Hit you with targeted advertisements and also provide you with cheaper alternatives (froogle)on goods you have bought.
;)
Yes it's a diabolical though, but hey there not evil
On Google.gov instead of having a clean easy to use interface, you must fill out at least 6 forms before your search query is returned, and when it is returned its entirely acronyms.
Rather than buy more companies, why not develop some of their current ideas beyond the point of "Beta".
Sometimes I think that Google uses the term Beta just to make users feel like their in some kind of exclusive, pre-release club. Beta as a branding concept. Who would have thought!?