You may remember that Google bought a small mobile social network called dodgeball. You don't remember, right? Well, don't be upset: Google also forgot about it. And the two founders decided to leave the "Mountain View-based Internet behemoth". For good.
It's no real secret that Google wasn't supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn't convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space. (...) It wasn't worth being that frustrated all the time - it was making us both crazy.
So now dodgeball looks almost the same as two years ago, while the mobile social space evolved and services like twitter or dada grew a lot lately. The obvious question is: why did Google buy Dodgeball?
{ Via Digital Markets. }
> why did Google buy Dodgeball?
ReplyDeleteSome possibilities:
- getting rid of competition (integrate & destroy)
- Google decided it was a strategic error (a la Google Answers)
- Dodgeball turned out to be less than Google expected
- Google couldn't manage to free resources for this (unlikely!)
- the mobile market changed dramatically, causing Google to reconsider their mobile plans
- a more interesting technology entered Google's sight, convincing them they need to shift resources
- Google is a too-big company by now and missed out on this opportunity by not acting swiftly
And now doubleclick.
ReplyDeleteIn italian soccer what happens is bigger teams tend to buy the best players, also if they already have a well assorted team, just to take them off the shelves...
ReplyDeletebuys because they can $$$$$$. Burn a whole in your pocket. Besides this important reason they also buy because they are following the advice of traditional approach to potential competition. Buy then ask what you can do with the resources or the bought. Some will be useful some will prove to have annoying personalities...this may be what happened with Dodgeball.
ReplyDeleteDodgeball looks pretty nice. Much better than the other two you mentioned (twitter and dada).
ReplyDeleteYes, but:
ReplyDeletedodgeball in August 2005
dodgeball now
(maybe the flash looked different in 2005)
Google has already implemented part of dodgeball into it's own mobile devices. They have added the feature of texting for venue info. And they are still working on implementing their own mobile device or may backbone the Apple phone. So give them time to implement the friends network. I can see this working well with iTunes on the Apple phone.
ReplyDelete