Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Google's Southern California Farm Team
Google's acquisition yesterday of Neven Vision is the latest in a string of acquisitions by Google of Southern California firms. Southern California has a steady history of acquisitions by search engine leaders. A timeline of Google's purchases below:
April 2003: Google purchases Santa Monica-based Applied Semantics for its Applied Semantics AdSense product, which eventually became Google AdSense. The deal was worth $41.5 million and 2,382,800 shares of Google stock, and established Google's Southern California product development office. (Those 2,382,800 shares of Google stock would be worth $907.8M at yesterday's closing price of $380.97).
July 2004: Google buys Pasadena-based Picasa, for its photo management software. Picasa was an Idealab company. Terms were not disclosed, but closed shortly after its IPO filing.
August 2004: Google debuts on the NASDAQ as GOOG in its initial public offering.
March 2005: Google buys Urchin Software, a San Diego-based provider of web analytics software. Google has incorporated Urchin into its advertising and publishing products to provide web analytics to customers. Terms were not disclosed.
January 2006: Google buys Newport Beach-based dMarc Broadcasting, in a deal worth potentially $1.1B (yes, billion) dollars. The initial deal was worth $102M in cash plus contingent payments. Google said it would incorporate dMarc's technology into Google's AdWords platform.
August 2006: Google acquires Santa Monica-based Neven Vision.
Competitor Yahoo also has been active in Southern California, though not as recently, with the following acquisitions in the area:
January 1999: Yahoo acquires Santa Monica-based Geocities, a provider of personal home pages, during the Internet boom. The deal was worth (in 1999 dollars) $3.56B and $1B in options.
June 2001: Yahoo acquired Santa Monica-based Launch Media for $12M, which later becomes part of Yahoo Music.
July 2003: Yahoo acquires Pasadena-based Overture Services, formerly Goto.com, a web advertising firm incubated by Idealab. The deal was worth $1.63B.
September 2004: Yahoo acquires San Diego-based MusicMatch for $160M.
January 2005: Yahoo sets up shop in Hollywood to oversee its media properties.