Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

We know that Google likes to get their hand in just about everything and anything which is why they make so many acquisitions. Google’s acquisition choice today is Jaiku, the fairly new service that competes with Twitter. An announcement on the Jaiku homepage along with an image (to the right) says it all, “Jaiku is joining Google!” With Google in love with Jaiku, it appears they’re ready to take on Twitter. While the announcement on Jaiku’s website says that it’s “too soon to comment on specific plans,” it would make sense if Google integrated Jaiku into Google Talk and Gmail at the very least. There’s no word on how much Google paid, but the deal is officially closed.

This acquisition makes sense to me, especially with how popular these “Micro-blogging” and “status updating” services are becoming, but TechCrunch points out how it could easily get compared to Dodgeball which “largely came to nothing.” While it could get compared to Dodgeball, a TechCrunch commenter points out how this could potentially “complement the new Google mobile OS that they are releasing free of charge to mobile manufacturer’s next year.” Another commenter says “This could certainly have interesting tie-in possibilities for the coming of the gPhone and could also tie in nicely with “big in Brazil” Orkut.” Both of those comments are insightful and really could be ways in which Google decides to use Jaiku.

On Jaiku’s Q&A page explaining this acquisition, they point out how the existing user base will still be able to use Jaiku as they have, and they’ll also be able to invite friends, but new user registrations have been closed off.  You’d think that they would want to leave it open, especially with all of the publicity they’ll be receiving as this news makes its way around the web, but they aren’t. They say “we are working on exciting new products and our Jaiku users will be among the first to try them out.” If you’re really wanting to try Jaiku now, you can request and invite code here.

It’s definitely an interesting buy for Google, although I am surprised that they didn’t go after Twitter first, seeing as Twitter is much more popular than Jaiku is at the moment. Any guesses on how Google might use Jaiku?

Thanks for the tip S!

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