Webjay, Truveo…Lots of Acquisitions
The Internet giants are shopping again: Yahoo acquired the playlist community site Webjay (based in Honolulu….yes!), video-search engine Truveo got bought by AOL (its rival, blinkx.tv had allegedly been in talks with IAC, but those supposedly failed) and I am sure a few more of these early acquisitions will happen soon. There is also a good list of acquisitions by Yahoo, Google and Microsoft collected at readwriteweb.
What is to be noted is that all of them are relatively early stage acquisitions, where companies like Yahoo get hold of a good product, strong engineering team and sometimes a (still small by their standards) dedicated user community. Then, they can go about throwing their distribution power at it and integrating it into their product portfolio. I remember long ago a senior exec at Yahoo saying something along the lines of: “I just need my customers to do three things on our site, but it doesn’t matter what those three things are…”. Looks like they are all busily adding more “things” to their product palette, which will increase switching costs and let them know their customers better. Ultimately, recently announced Google Pack goes in the same direction, although desktop vs web-based apps is a whole different discussion.
One company that was heavily rumored to be acquired by Google, Riya, announced a $15M funding. Looks like they prefer going it alone, and who knows whether the acquisition rumors were true. Their product promises to recognize faces in consumer photographs and helps you sort your collection that way. Can’t wait for the first working release.
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