Google goes on and on and on............
I am a very big fan of google docs & spreadsheets and use them daily for personal use. I read few days ago that google has acquired Zenter a company which provided online web based presentation (or slideshow) creation (something like microsoft powerpoint).
This was the only missing piece in google office since documents and spreadsheets were already available.
Google is growing based on acquisitions (we all remember the huge You Tube acquisition for $1.65 billion) but still google has not stopped there it is acquiring more products.
A quick look at some of my favourite products which were acquired by google:
1) Product: Blogger
Use: To create dynamic on the fly blogs
Company: Pyra Labs
Current: http://www.blogger.com/
I was using blogger and google provided a seamless transfer and allowed usage of google username password.
2) Product: Picasa
Use: Online photo management
Company: Idea Labs
Current: Picasa - http://picasaweb.google.com/home
Though picasa is popular it has certain bandwidth upload and size restrictions (1 GB) and blog images are basically stored in the picasaweb hence i don't like to use picasa and instead use Kodak Gallery - http://www.kodakgallery.com/Welcome.jsp
3) Product: Urchin
Use: Web analytics (like web trends, google analytics)
Company: Urchin Software Corporation - http://www.urchin.com/
Current: http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google analytics has a great new look now and is very helpful for a person managing a blog or a website to know about the visitor trends.
4) Product: Feed Burner
Use: Collect statistics about RSS & Atom Feeds in a blog or site.
Company: Feed burner - http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home
Current: Not yet merged
Right now analytics does not provide any extra service to track rss feeds but it would be great if feed burner is linked inside google analytics.
5) Product: Writely
Use: Create word documents on the fly on the internet.
Company: Upstartle - http://www.writely.com/BasePage.aspx
Current: Google Docs & Spreadsheets - http://docs.google.com/
6) Product: Jot Spot
Use: To create pages on the fly and update content (WIKI)
Company: http://www.jot.com/
Current: Yet to come (it has been a long time since it was acquired)
7) Product: You Tube
Use: To stream & see videos online (like google videos)
Company: http://www.youtube.com/
Current: http://www.youtube.com/
Here though google has competing product google videos it still purchases you tube and continues to maintain both.
8) Product: Tonic Systems - http://www.tonicsystems.com/
Use: Presentation software on the web
Google is yet to merge it into its suite of products but recently last 2 weeks ago it bought another online presentation making software Zenter - http://www.zenter.com/
So google goes on and on and on with its list of acquisitions each time scaring microsoft who watches silently :)
Here is my wishlist for which other companies, google can acquire and bring in to its suite:
1) Del.ici.ous - a great bookmarking tool.
2) Skype - too late taken by ebay now but skype provides conference facility which google talk lacks.
3) Linked In - a useful job networking site
4) Go To Meeting - Microsoft has live meeting why not google acquire go to meeting. Note: Vista comes with inbuilt netmeeting software thus making WebEx & GotoMeeting to run out of business.
We never know soon we may hear google coming up with such competing products.
