Top 13 Companies acquired by Google
On its way to become the one of the Top companies in the IT sector, Google has been on an acquisition spree. The acquisition spree has been ramped up since 2010, and since then it has acquired close to 100 companies. Major companies acquired are of US origin and mostly located in and around San Francisco Bay Area.
The details below will help you understand the Top 13 companies acquired by Google in the recent past few years.
1. Meebo : Google acquired Meebo, a US company, for $100million on 4th June 2012. Meebo was established in 2005 and provided browser based Instant Messaging services and supported Yahoo Messenger, Face book Chat, Google Talk among others. One of the versions was run on the iPhone, and another application was developed for the Android mobile phones.
2. QuickOffice : Google acquired Quick office on 5th June 2012. Its used in Smart phones and tablets where users can edit, View and create text files, spreadsheet or presentations. It has Quick sheet ,Quick word and Quick point for accessing the files. The program is localized in 36 languages and comes as a built in solution in the smart phones of major carriers including Vodafone, Orange, China Mobile and AT&T.
3. Sparrow: Google Acquired Sparrow on 20th July 2012 for $25million. The company was a predominant player in the Mobile apps domain and was operating in France. It was an e-mail client for IOS and OS X. It created raves by within a day of its launch by becoming the Top paid app. However, soon after it being acquired by Google it ceased to exist.
4. Wildfire Interactive : Google acquired this company in the social media marketing space for a sum of $450million. It acquired the company in the month of August 2012.It is one of the largest Social Media Marketing software companies, with a client base of over 21000 companies across the world. It provides mobile and Desktop page management, messaging and real-time Analytics services.
5. Frommer’s: 13th August,2012 for a sum of $23 million, google acquired this company in the Travel domain providing travel guides to the users. It all started in 1957, on a travel guide series written by Arthur Frommer’s. The book was named Europe on $5 a day. It became the first book, which revealed the ways which the Americans could adopt to travel in Europe.
6. VirusTotal.com : Google acquired the security domain company on 7th September2012. Users could check their files up to a size of 32 MB for Viruses using the site for free. It was of great use as it checked the files using 44 diverse antivirus products and scan engines. It featured in the list of 100 best products by PC world in 2007.
7. NikSoftware. Inc: On17th September 2012, Google acquired Nik Software primarily into the photography domain. It was founded in 1995 and it entered into a strategic alliance with Nikon in2005. It provided digital Photographic software which took care of various issues in digital photography like noise reduction, color correction, sharpening of images etc.
8. October was marked by the acquisition of Viewdle. The company worked in the area of Facial Recognition. It acquired the company for a sum of $45 million. Viewdle consisted of the following products:
• Social Camera uses face recognition technique for social photographs on the Android phones.
• Viewdle uploader helps in Photo tagging on Face book.
9. November again was marked by the acquisition of Incentive Targeting Inc., operating in the digital coupons space. The company provides a platform for the supermarket chains and grocery chains to advertise their services and augment sales. The services recorded purchase history of every single customer thus helping the retailers offer and sell their products to the purchaser as per his/her needs.
10. Bufferbox was acquired by Google on 30th November 2012. It’s a Canadian company into the packaging industry.
The originating Idea behind the Bufferbox is simple yet provides huge relief to the users. Parcel Systems have the modus Operandi wherein they deliver the parcels at your doorsteps. Sometimes you find broken parcels, sometimes they are lost in transit and if not so mostly the parcels go unattended with you not present at home. Bufferbox came up with a network of pick-up stations, located at convenient places, which keep the, parcels safe and secure till you pick them on your way back to home.
11. Apture
By embedding a single java script code in the website, one can register to the Apture account. When a reader, blogger or publisher highlights words or phrases and clicks on them, a small window opens showing related items. By the help of this, this blogger or publishers can edit the viewed items without leaving the page which saves a lot of time. It can be downloaded and used instantly for free. It was acquired by Google in November,2011 and like others it discontinued its services from 20th December 2011.
12.SocialGrapple:
With the world spending increasing hour on the Social Networking sites, it was becoming difficult to keep a track of followers in terms of their like, dislikes, changes in their count and so on. It was Social grapple, which came as, an application for doing analytics on Twitter the social networking site, giving users a clear idea of the trending patterns of their followers and other such useful information. Merely one year of it coming into existence, it was acquired by Google in October 2011.
13. Zagat:
Featuring 30,000 and more Best places to stay, eat and drink worldwide, Zagat has built its credibility in the past 30 Yrs. It has ratings, reviews, menus of the best restaurants, hotels and other places of importance across the world. It was acquired by Google for a price of $151million in October 2011.