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Two Google executives responsible for the company's acquisition strategy, Salman Ullah (pictured at right) and Patrick Dempsey, spoke yesterday at a conference in Los Angeles.
Ullah said Google is most interested in startups that can monetize their users, rather than just attract them. And Dempsey stressed the company responds to each approach from a prospective seller but prefers to be contacted via e-mail. It doesn't sound like anything revealing was said yesterday.
What I'm most interested in learning about from the Google acquisition execs is how Google is able to consistently and quickly relaunch its acquired startups as proprietary products that have an immediate impact by expanding or deepening its audience. I'm thinking of Picasa Labs turning into Blogger, Keyhole turning into Google Earth, Urchin turning into Google Analytics, and Writely turning into Google Docs.
It seems the key to its past success is its strategy of targeting early stage technology startups that can be plugged into a product void that millions of its users are just waiting to see filled. It would be useful to learn exactly how it pinpoints an area and then how the acquired startup is brought seamlessly into the fold.
For more on Google's acquisition strategy, see:
Between the Lines
Bloomberg
Tags: google, m&a, , vc, venture+capital
You know, that's a good point. Come to think of it, Pyra Labs was one of the worst integrated targets Google ever acquired. Blogger has barely improved since then.
Separately, as a former JotSpot user, I'll be curious to see how that gets relaunched.
Pyra Labs had already been running Blogged successfully before the Google acquisition.