The big tech story of the bank holiday weekend was Google’s takeover of social toolbar developer Meebo. The Mountain View based startup confirmed the move via its blog on Monday saying, “We are happy to announce that Meebo has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google.”
TechCrunch reported that the buyout has cost Google in the region of $100 million. Meebo’s engineers are expected to work on publisher tools for Google+. Founded in 2005, Meebo went from focusing on offering one-stop instant messaging that incorporated most of the popular IM clients (Meebo Messenger) to promoting for site publishers an overlay for continuous sharing with advertising (Meebo Bar). Now, the site’s homepage features a personalised stream of content based on consumer’s ‘interest profiles’. “We’re super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike,” the Meebo team said on its blog.
“We are always looking for better ways to help users share content and connect with others across the web, just as they do in real life,” said a Google said spokesman.
As well as Meebo’s engineering expertise, Google is acquiring a base of around 100 million monthly active users (via comScore, last December) and this could be an important move in the search giant’s attempt to turn Google+ into a genuine competitor to Facebook.
