Google Acquires Dodgeball 253
kalki writes "Dodgeball.com, a service that uses mobile phones to help people meet up with friends who are in the same location, said on its website on Wednesday that it has been bought by Web search leader Google Inc. Also available on the official site is a Q&A about the deal." From the article: "As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken dodgeball about a far as we can alone. Since we finished grad school, we've been trying to figure out how to grow dodgeball and make it a better service along the way. We talked to a lot of different angel investors and venture capitalists, but no one really 'got' what we were doing - that is until we met Google."
people search (Score:4, Interesting)
Borg?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Google the next Microsoft? (Score:1, Interesting)
I know it's unreasonable at the time being... (Score:4, Interesting)
Where it fits in for Google (Score:4, Interesting)
It's New York City, it's location based, and it's more than GPS...
Re:people search (Score:5, Interesting)
(hey, Google could get into the cell business and triangulate you from its towers. Now that IS getting evil.)
Info about the technology. (Score:1, Interesting)
Dodgeball Looks Pretty Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing to watch is the post acquisition. Google's really didn't do much for Orkut. While Friendster continually builds a user base and adds features, Orkut remains slow and bug ridden.
Does this mean.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The cynic in me... (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting direction google is taking. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember reading a cartoon one of these days where basically before a job interview, the interviewer starts to mention all this "nasty" stuff about the interviewee because he checked the interviewee's Orkut and found all the groups where he belongs to, etc. I've also heard about people getting dumped because of Orkut. Many people have already closed their accounts because of this. If you are evil, you can find out A LOT about the person's life and do them harm.
Obviously dodgeball does not fall into this category, but it makes me think about all the services Google has planned. Obviously that overall they do more good than harm, but I can't help but think that some of this will be abused and used by organized crime, identity theft etc.
Think about it.
Now mix those three together. I wonder how far Google will go in integrating these services, and how much care they will take in preventing abuse. We'll just have to wait and see.
On buying startups before they get big (GOOG) (Score:5, Interesting)
"What companies should do is go out and discover startups when they're young, before VCs have puffed them up into something that costs hundreds of millions to acquire."
[1] http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149177&cid=12
[2] http://simpy.com/ [simpy.com] - 1-man mini Google
Re:New Trend (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe it was stated on John Battelle [battellemedia.com]'s weblog that search is the center of gravity [thenewnormal.com] for the computer industry [battellemedia.com] .
Of course I didn't RTFA, but (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Funny, Yes, but not funny for Google. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:people search (Score:2, Interesting)
Dodgeball updates your position based on sms.
Two features make it better than just texting your friends:
1. You can alert friends of friends, and end up meeting people in your extended network who happen to be at the same bar.
2. Your updates can be read online.
That second feature has some overlap with mobile blogging, something Google just got into...
But Dodgeball has all the dating tools of a singles site, too.
Re:Funny, Yes, but not funny for Google. (Score:5, Interesting)
Money Maker (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:When you "google" someone tomorrow (Score:1, Interesting)
You are logged in as rekcah5 in New York City. (Score:2, Interesting)