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Motorola could be Google’s largest acquisition, but the company has many more plans and projects. And according to the latest rumors, the Search Giant is currently in the talks for purchasing Meebo.
If you haven’t heard of it, Meebo is a social network / chat client / tool bar service. And sources are indicating that this is not exactly the cheapest company to purchase. It could cost Google $100 million.
But why exactly would Google purchase this company? Google has a social network – Google+. It also has Google Talk. Would Google really purchase a $100 million-dollar company to have a form of tool bar with persistent social networking and chat capabilities?
Maybe it would be a good idea to have a form of unified chatting client for Google Talk. One that you could use wherever you may be browsing through. Or they could somehow integrate Meebo’s social network to Google+? Anything we could mention would be nothing but a wild guess. But it is always good to try to speculate, so what do you think?
[Source: All Things Digital Via: Electronista]
$100 million for the toolbar that ended up on most people’s PC’s accidently. It’s one of those darn pesky tool bars that if you don’t read what your installer is going to install will embed itself into your browsers without your knowledge.Only real plus to this purchase would be to take over yet another competitor. Not worth 100 mil
Nah… doesn’t make sense. I say bad info.
Please buy them, I love being able to have my yahoo and msn accounts under one client, but if/when you purchase them, bring back video chat, why they removed it in the first place was bad PR on their part and probably hurt them financially.
Bad investment.
Maybe its a Don’t be Evil moment and they’re just buying it to shut it down and remove it from existence
Google should buy pinterest
people still use toolbar?
meebo was my inspiration for installing an ad blocker. The meebo bar is the #1 most irritating thing on the web.
I never used their toolbar, but I’ve been a big fan of their web-service from their start. At the time it was the only http:// (port 80) consolidated client for all your chat accounts that allowed me to work around effin’ firewalls at the job place.
Don’t forget orkut.
Pocket change for google!
Never been a fan of Meebo myself. About the only thing I could see this working is to get quick source for integrating with other chat clients. I am sure that Google will love GTalk to be the only client you need, especially on an Android phone.
However, let’s look at Gizmo. They bought Gizmo, and it simply made sense that they would integrate SIP with Google Voice. About the only thing that Google Voice seemed to have benefit from it was the ability to integrate +883 dialing which so far hasn’t really taken off because while it is a real country code endorsed by the ITU, the carriers has yet to support it.
So maybe they will buy it, and based on some history – will hopefully allow the GTalk client to integrate with all of the other IM clients. However, I have questioned the results of some of Google’s acquisitions (such as Gizmo).
If it can ensure that my Whatsapp messages, my G+ messages, my text messages and my Google Talk messages all appear in 1 app from which I can respond to them. Then BUY IT!!! BUY IT WITH FIRE!!! (that made no sense, but BUY IT!)
the only reason why I use meebo on my phone is because I was told you could tranfer files through msn. I haven’t tested it yet…
I say this is bad news for people who actually use Meebo Messenger. You think the Yahoo/AIM/etc interop will still be there after it gets into Google’s hands? Yahoo, AOL, et al will demand heaps of money, and Google will choose to just strip out that functionality instead of paying them.
I’ll bet they just use the social aspects of Meebo and not the IM.
Another theory: They’re buying it because it’s high-volume and everything goes through the Meebo servers (even traffic destined to go to the various IM networks). This means they can put their analytics to work and target ads to the users based on the content of the instant messages.
As above, the other IM networks will probably take notice of this, and demand they pull the functionality.
They might as well just buy MySpace then. Meebo is just a copy of MySpace
Meebo used to be awesome, back when it was simply an “IM aggregator” that would let you access multiple AIM/MSN/Facebook accounts from the same web interface. I haven’t touched it since they switched models. About half as fnuctional as it once was.
Doesn’t really make sense how google would use meebo, i didn’t even know people still use meebo to be honest. I remeber downloading it on my Tmobile G1 years ago, beck when i use to use AIM. But google is always trying to find ways to beat out the competition, so we’ll just wait and see.
“But it is always good to try to speculate”
Uh, no…no it is most certainly not. The idea in quote above is the root of pretty much every case of high expectations that has, in turn, caused every case of disappointment in products, services, movies, etc. because the products, services, movies, etc. did not live up to the hype.
Trust me on this one, it’s far more rewarding for all parties involved to just let it happen and be pleasantly surprised with the product; and if it falls short anyway, then it’s not as big of a letdown.
Google wants to acquire more social networking talent.