Google nearing Half century of Acquisitions - Panoramio to update Google Earth

Google acquisitions has reached nearly 40 in number since 2001,Panoramio ,the latest in the list. Google’s caption of “Dont be evil” is turning many heads now as the recent past certainly does not fit into Google’s traditional non-aggressive attitude towards acquisitions for monopoly in the market.

About Panoramio

Panoramio is a community photos website that enables digital photographers to geo-locate, store and organize their photographs — and to view those photographs in Google Earth. Other users can search and browse Panoramio photos and suggest edits to the metadata associated with the photos. Panoramio also offers an API that enables web developers to embed Panoramio functionality into their websites.

Why acquisition of Panoramio

The acquisition of Panoramio will incorporate that website, its underlying technology, its content, developers, and user community into the Google Geo product mix. Panoramio will add interesting, useful content to Google products and will bolster Google’s engineering and technical resources.
The upcoming acquisition will bring many advantages to Panoramio users, starting with a better infrastructure to improve the reliability of Panoramio, more frequent updates of Panoramio’s Google Earth layer, and more resources for some invisible tasks that take time out from working on new features.

Whats the plan as of now ?

For a certain period of time, Panoramio will remain the same web-based service hosting your photos but, once the migration as a Google product is started, the current registered members will have to transfer their photos to the search giant’s product. There is no other alternative because Google sustained that all the photos will be deleted if a user doesn’t agree to transfer the data rights to Google.

Google’s list of acquisition since 2001

2001

• September 20, 2001 Deja’s Usenet archive over an undisclosed value
• September 20, 2001 Outride, Inc. over an undisclosed value.

2003

• February, 2003 Pyra Labs Blogger over an undisclosed value.
• April, 2003 Neotonic Software over an undisclosed value.
• April, 2003 Applied Semantics over $102 million .
• September 30, 2003 Kaltix over an undisclosed value.

2004

• May 10, 2004 Ignite Logic over an undisclosed value.
• June 23, 2004 Baidu (2.6% stake) over $5 million .
• July 13, 2004 Picasa , photo management software over an undisclosed value.
• October 27, 2004 Keyhole, Inc. over an undisclosed value.
• Sept.-Dec., 2004 Where2 Mapping software; used in Google Maps over an undisclosed value.
• Sept.-Dec., 2004 ZipDash Used in Google Ride Finder over an undisclosed value.

2005

• ca. 2005 2Web Technologies - web-based spreadsheet over an undisclosed value
• March 28, 2005 Urchin Software Corporation -Web analysis over an undisclosed value.
• May 12, 2005 Dodgeball-social networking over an undisclosed value .
• July, 2005 Reqwireless Web browser and Mobile email over an undisclosed
• July 7, 2005 Current Communications Group Broadband internet over $100 million (partial investment) .
• August 17, 2005 Android -Software for Handheld devices over an undisclosed value.
• November, 2005 Skia-Graphics software over an undisclosed
• November 17, 2005 Akwan Information Technologies over an undisclosed value.
• December 20, 2005 AOL (5% stake) for $1 billion.

2006

• January 17, 2006 dMarc Broadcasting-Radio advertising software and platform for $102 million .
• February 14, 2006 Measure Map -Blog analysis over an undisclosed value.
• March 9, 2006 Upstartle-Makers of Writely, online word processing over an undisclosed value.
• March 14, 2006 @Last Software-Makers of SketchUp, 3-D modeling over an undisclosed value.
• April 9, 2006 Orion -Advanced search method over an undisclosed value.
• August 15, 2006 Neven Vision-Computer vision over an undisclosed value.
• October 31, 2006 JotSpot -Website applications over an undisclosed value.
• November, 2006 YouTube-Video sharing for $1.65 billion.
• December, 2006 Endoxon -Mapping solutions for $28 million.

2007 (till May)

• January, 2007 Xunlei (partial acquisition) -Network, file-sharing over an undisclosed value.
• February, 2007 Adscape -Video game advertising for $23 million.
• March, 2007 Trendalyzer -software over an undisclosed value.
• April, 2007 Tonic Systems-Presentation software over an undisclosed value.
• April, 2007 Marratech video conferencing software over an undisclosed value.
• May 11, 2007 GreenBorder Technologies - Desktop enterprise security over an undisclosed value.
• April 13, 2007 DoubleClick-Online Advertising for $3.1 billion.
• May 11, 2007 GreenBorder Technologies, Inc. -Enterprise Security over an undisclosed value.
• May 23, 2007 FeedBurner-Online RSS Feeds for $100 Million.

ref:wikipedia