Google is at it again! 2 acquisitions in the span of a few days. Social search startup Aardvark and iPhone(yes iPhone) email app maker reMail. The reasons for both these ‘buys’ are contrasting.
Social Footprint
One of the few areas where Google is playing catch-up is the ‘snowballing’ social media space. On the back social search and the release of Buzz, the takeover of Aardvark seems a logical step in its bid to expand it’s social footprint. Aardvark is a San Francisco based startup, founded by two former Google employess – Max Ventilla, who lead Google’s marketing initiatives for Adsense, and Nathan Stroll, who was once in charge of Google News.
The story was first reported on TechCrunch and while there are no official numbers, the size of the deal is expected to be around 50 million.
Present users of Aardvark will be glad to know that the service will continue to be available to them as before. It has also been added to Google Labs according to a post on their blog. It goes on to say that they will continue to improve the user experience it provides.
Talent acquisition
Many people would probably wonder why Google bought reMail, creators of an iPhone email app. The answer, Talent acquisition. ReMail CEO Gabor Cselle, who was once an intern at Google, stated that his obsession with email began during his internship with Gmail. Since then he has gone on to becoming VP Engineering at Outlook plugin maker – Xobni, before starting his own company with the funding at aid from Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, creators of Gmail and cofounders of FriendFeed. He will now join Google as a Product Manger for Gmail.
reMail, an email application that focusses on enhancing the searchability of email (even offline), will no longer be available on the Apple App Store. However, the application will continue to work and support will be provided till the end of March. As a parting gift for its users, all premium services have been activated free of cost for all users.
The long term impact on Google, Gmail is unclear at this stage. reMail probably would have been expected to be a takeover target of Apple, to improve its email functionality.
Eric Schmidt stated that Google is likely to acquire 1 company per month. Well, we’ll be watching!
