Google’s Social Media History
Over the years Google has made many attempts to join the social media realm. Some successful some not.
There have been rumors lately that Google is launching a product Google Me which will be a Facebook competitor.
Lets look at Google’s history with social media to date:
– Feb 17, 2003, Google buys Pyra Labs the creators of Blogger.
– Late 2003, Google offers to buy Friendster for $30 million but offer is declinded. Instead Google then partners with Friendster showing search engine and text ads.
– January 24, 2004, Google Launches Orkut and today has a worldwide audience of around 100 million users.
– April 1, 2004, Google launches Gmail in private beta and roughly 3 years later is opened to the general public.
– May 11, 2005, Google purchased location service Dodgeball (from Dennis Crowley now Foursquare CEO and Founder). In 2009 the product is replaced with Google Latitude.
– August 24, 2005, Google Talk launched (Skype competitor).
– October 27, 2005, Google launches Google Reader with is an RSS aggregator tool allowing you to view all your RSS feeds in one central location.
– February 7, 2007, Chat in Gmail is launched.
– March 9, 2006, Google purchases Writely an online word processing tool which becomes the foundation of Google Docs.
– June 13, 2006, Picasa Web Albums is created and launched (similar to Flickr).
– October 9, 2006, YouTube is purchased for $1.65 billion USD.
– May 23, 2007, Feedburner is acquired for around $100 million USD.
– July 2, 2007, GrandCentral is acquired for $50 million USD and 2 years later becomes Google Voice.
– July 9, 2007, Postini a online security company is acquired for $625 million USD.
– August 9, 2007, Google and MySpace (and Fox interactive Media Network) sign a $900 million advertising agreement.
– May 12, 2008, Google Friend Connect is created (similar to Facebook connect).
– February 5, 2009, Google Latitude replaces Dodgeball.
– March 11, 2009, Google Voice launches.
– May 19, 2009, Google Wave produce is released to general public.
– Feb 9, 2010, Social networking platform Google Buzz is launched.
– Feb 1, 2010, Aardvark a social networking search product is purchased for around $50 million USD.
Source: various Google sites and Wikipedia
