Google in Pursuit of Happiness

Google is almost buying anything and everything that could help satisfy its insecurity rising mainly due to social networking giants Facebook and Twitter. Let’s see does this statement hold water or not.

In November last year, Google bought mobile advertising service AdMob as well as VOIP provider Gizmo5, in the month of February 2010 itself Google has done a number of deals.

Google Acquired Aardvark – Aardvark is based on Q&A type search engine. Users have to ask questions, which will be sent to members who have expressed interest in answering questions according to categories (sports, movies, etc.). You get a direct response from those who answer the question. You don’t have to go hunting for the answer. Instead, you wait for the answer to come to you.

reMail has been acquired by Google – an iPhone and iPod Touch application that downloads email and makes it searchable.

Last Year in April there were talks that Google may buy Twitter to integrate in its Gmail, but that didn’t work out and Google seemed determined to fight back launched ‘Buzz’.  As if anything else was needed for Google to go crazy, privacy fiasco with Buzz happened which left Google embarrassed, and had to come out with an official apology to all Gmail users.  As this article is being written, Google is still tweaking Buzz for better usability & privacy. As we all know with more than 400 million users, Facebook is the world’s largest social network. Facebook will eventually launch its own webmail service, this project is Codenamed ‘Titan’, the service would offer users e-mail addresses ending in @facebook.com. This would make the user start using facebook email ID’s and the transition to new account will not be cumbersome & painstaking as all your friends are already in your Facebook account. It’s conceivably the greatest threat that Gmail has ever faced in its history of existence.

Yahoo Bing:

It’s not as funny and witty as Chandler Bing but has drawn attention almost the same. Yahoo Bing or say Yahoo & Bing are together and Yahoo! will transition their search to Bing, and their paid search platform will become adCenter. Also a few days back Microsoft and Yahoo! have received approval from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission for their search deal announced last summer. So the balls have started to roll and the merger may be as soon as 2010 holiday season. Bing seemed to have struck right nerve at the right places and is the first sign that Microsoft is motivated to get it right, and it’s really determined to give a fight to Google. This deal sends a strong signal Google can’t ignore. If Microsoft can adopt a passion for innovation and execute the plans without getting it into right and left hand of its Executives, Google will have to respond in kind.

It seems Google’s decade old regime is under eminent threat which doesn’t seem to be of immense in nature but surely undeniable.