Multiple sources are confirming that the Chinese/Israeli startup behind the Maxthon Browser has sold a minority stake to Google. The total investment size is rumored to be around $1 million. We are also hearing that this investment is part of a “much larger strategic deal” between the two companies.
Maxthon has had over 80 million downloads of its browser, and over half of its users are in China. Maxthon-originated searches may account for up to 25% of total Baidu traffic, according to one source.
In the second social media acquisition by Yahoo! story in the last 12 hours, news has emerged that Yahoo! has agreed to acquire MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog is a blog community and analytics tool
Google Inc. has set aside about $187.5 million of the approximately $1.65 billion it’s paying for video-sharing site YouTube Inc. for unspecified current or future losses, it said Tuesday.
Google has now closed the YouTube acquisition more than a month after it was announced. The final price was $15 M in cash, along with *lots* of Google stock, which adds up to approximately $1.775 Billion, based on current stock prices. [Continue Reading >>]
Google and JotSpot have announced an acquisition by Google. JotSpot makes a collaborative product similar to a wiki that allows groups of people to work together and share ideas. As with most new Google acquisitions, registration is closed for new customers, but there is a waiting list if you want to sign up. Also in Google form, JotSpot’s services are now free.
Miguel Helft of the New York Times interviews the man who originally had the idea for a video sharing website, but stayed on the sidelines to continue his studies. Even though Jawed Karim is not an employee of YouTube, he stands to make a chunk of change as the largest individual shareholder of YouTube. Read the entire story.
The Motely Fool speculates on a possible link between Google and The Knot Inc, suggesting that Google might or should acquire The Knot. The author mentions that one of The Knot’s new board members is a Regional Sales and Marketing director for Google.
BTW, What do you think of my original artwork for this post? I took that picture myself and enhanced the colors a bit with Picasa.
Now that YouTube belongs to Google, there might be a plan in place to allow users who upload popular videos to share in the ad revenue from the pages where those videos are displayed. The could be quite lucrative given that YouTube shows an estimated 100 million videos a day and has over 72 million visitors a month.
As you all know YouTube has been acquired by Google. Now the cofounders of YouTube give us some insight and some laughter on the subject. This is official okay?
UPDATE: YouTube has been courting potential buyers all year, including Yahoo! and Microsoft, but what sold them on the deal with Google, (besides the cool 1.65 bill.), was the fact that Google would let them keep their own offices and continue managing YouTube much as it is now. YouTube will continue with it’s separate brand, unlike many other Google acquisitions such as Urchin- now Google analytics, and Keyhole- now Google Earth. The only difference now with YouTube is they will have massive Google resources/money/bandwidth backing them, allowing them to create what just might be the best video upload/sharing site in the world. Go get ‘em boys.
Remeber how Google bought Sketchup last month? They’ve now announced that they will be giving it away for personal use. So go ahead download it, and start modeling your world- a house, toolshed, cabin, who knows what else. I’m not sure what the practical uses are at the moment, but it sure looks like a lot of fun.
Sample 3D models
It has all sorts of 3D geometry and pre-made components so you don’t have to do the grunt work, and cool things like automatic, real-time shading shows you just how the sun will hit your project. If you want to see some samples of what people have modelled with this software, check out the Sketchup Warehouse- you can even upload your own model when you’re done. I’ve posted buildings but you can use this to model anything.
I know this post is somewhat a rambling confusion :), but I just wanted to add that in the 3D warehouse, you can download the model right to the Sketchup software or to Google earth and view the sattelite imagery for it. This is getting cooler and cooler.
Sketchup is a 3D drawing/designing/viewing program developed by @ Last Software which has just been acquired by Google. Sketchup has written a rather long blog entry about the buyout, as has Google. Read some more about Sketchup or download their software and give it a try.
A relatively new web application, Writely, created by the California upstart “Upstartle” has been bought by Google. Writely allows you to create, edit, share and store your documents on the web and have them accessible whenever and wherever you want- and it does it all within your browser. Links Writely - Writely’s blog post - Google’s blog post.
I found it rather interesting that Google would be advertising one of it’s products on the new Yahoo Publisher’s Network (YPN). The YPN is a direct competitor to Google’s own Adsense advertising network. As you can see in the screenshot, Google is advertising it’s free photo browsing/editing software Picasa, which it aqcuired in 2004.
Google has just posted in their blog that they have aquired MeasureMap, unique blog statistics/analytics software, from Adaptive Path. There’s no mention of what they paid, but Jeffery Veen of MeasureMap wrote the post, so it looks like he was part of the purchase. Looks like this product will go well with GoogleAnalytics (formerly Urchin). You can also read about this on Adaptive Path’s site.
Now that 
