
Google Acquires Angstro, a Social Networking Start-Up - donohoe
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/google-acquires-angstro-a-social-networking-start-up/?src=twr
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houseabsolute
I wonder if Google believes that acquiring enough social networking startups
will enable them to cobble something together that competes with Facebook. I
suppose it's possible, but I'm skeptical.

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MC27
It's not like a social network is a difficult thing to build. Google's got the
audience, all they have to do is build something that's useful and addictive.

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houseabsolute
> It's not like a social network is a difficult thing to build.

All evidence from the past notwithstanding?

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MC27
I think one of Google's main problems in respect to building apps, is they
stick to their overly simple design principles, which don't lend themselves to
complex services like social networks. If you log into Orkut as an early
adopter, it's not that impressive at all. Similar experience with Wave.

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prakash
I was an early user of Angstro, excellent product and team. I discovered tons
of interesting & relevant content via Angstro, and Rohit and his team were
quick to implement interesting features.

Great acquisition for Google.

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gaiusparx
Beside search, what are the other Google products that are developed in-house?

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dododo
<http://www.googlelabs.com/?status=graduated>

and to come:

<http://www.googlelabs.com/>

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jsdalton
Hmm, that's not entirely accurate. They list Google Docs under Labs, but the
word processor part at least came from their acquisition of Writely, if I am
not mistaken.

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patrickaljord
If you look at the iPhone, the two most important parts were acquired too.
WebKit used to be KDE's KHTML and multitouch was acquired too. And all the
cool apps were done by Google.

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nanairo
Wow... that's quite a statement.

All the cool apps were not done by Google, but _with_ Google. I can't imagine
Apple delegating anything, less of all a main application like maps or
youtube.

WebKit was not KHTML. Webcore was KHTML and Webkit, which offered a lot more,
was built on top of Webcore. Eventually Apple decided to make Webkit open
source (Webcore was already open source since KHTML was).

On the other hand you are very much correct on multitouch, and I would also
mention Lala, and their ads company. Also iTunes was acquired. And of course
the biggest acquisition of all (for Apple): NeXT. :)

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omouse
I don't seeee why they're wasting their time with this. Why don't they get all
those supposedly talented people to stop reinventing the wheel when it comes
to social networks?

