
Google Acquires Like.com - sajithw
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/its-official-google-acquires-like-com/
======
maxklein
Are you sure this is not about the facebook 'like' concept? Facebook has
brought the 'like' keyword into the mainstream, and the 'like' concept is
creating a graph over the entire web that is basically sorting the web by how
many people actively like the pages.

Perhaps google sees that this approach is basically like their page-rank, but
more exclusive and less spammable. Since this 'like' concept was quickly
understood by people on facebook, owning the key 'like' domain means that
google is poised to exploit the understanding of 'like'.

Additionally, it gains all the search knowledge and skills of the people
behind the like.com website.

This facebook social graph thing with 'liking' websites may be important.

~~~
nostromo
Interesting comment.

If facebook's "like" was to replace PageRank they would have to have buttons
on a whole lot more pages (Google said a while back they consider one trillion
URLs in their index). Especially sites like Wikipedia and Craigslist -- which
seem unlikely to ever use facebook widgets.

Do you ever think "liking" could realistically replace Google's crawler
approach?

~~~
relix
It could not.

"liking" is inherently biased. It is in no way an objective measurement of
usefulness. Pages that contain negative content will never be "liked" even
though they might be very useful or linked to a lot.

As an extreme example, say a mass-murderer becomes very famous. No one (except
for a trolling few) will "like" a page giving information about him, like on
wikipedia. But this page would be a lot more interesting than a sensationalist
article describing him as the second and third coming of Satan, which would be
"liked" a lot more, without really being more valuable.

------
bl4k
For a company with $50M in revenue and $50M raised in venture funding, $100M
is not a very big acquisition. It is interesting that despite the big revenue
figures, it is never mentioned if Like.com is _profitable_ \- so we can only
assume that it isn't and this acquisition is another asset sale.

Google offered them $30-40M before they launched in '05. They should have
taken that.

Back then Munjal (the CEO) was writing an interesting blog about starting Riya
- worth reading the old posts: <http://munjal.typepad.com/>

~~~
patio11
Any sale of a search engine to Google is an asset/talent sale, right? They're
not going to operate a competing search engine brand (aside from that one they
do user testing at) -- they're going to assimilate its technological and
biological distinctiveness into their own.

Google has 23 billion a year in revenue, substantially all of it from two
products. Operating an internal competitor to Product #1 will not move the
needle. Its, quite literally, less likely to make them less money than
changing the shade of blue they use.

------
jsz0
_If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again._

Alternatively get rid of the competition so they can't surprise you by
succeeding. If they succeed to much they might just turn down your offers to
buy them later and suddenly you've got to play catch-up.

~~~
nanairo
Isn't that what happened with FB?

~~~
jsz0
Pretty much. Twitter too if you believe those rumors from a couple of years
ago. I'm just very skeptical of big companies buying little ones.

------
sushi
I am certain something is brewing inside Google behind the purchase of
like.com

They also invested in the company called <http://www.pixazza.com> which is
doing something on the same lines. Basically trying to monetize the images on
web.

Maybe Google is planning to incorporate the various bits and pieces of facial
or image recognition in order to monetize it.

~~~
joshu
Google ventures != google.

------
keyle
With such technologies, it'd be fun to see a face recognition pattern which
finds people with similar faces on facebook :)

I remember some experiment where they merged hundreds of photos of people from
the same country and you could see the emerging patterns of big heads, big
noses countries, etc. Fascinating.

As to why google would buy like.com, no idea!

~~~
mkramlich
facial recognition search: it's so when everybody changes their name per Eric
Schmidt's recommendation, Google can still find you :)

------
nickpatrick
To compete with Bing's visual search, perhaps?
<http://www.bing.com/visualsearch>

Also, the domain is a nice bonus. The future of search lies in recommendation
and personalization, and Google will eventually want to build a brand to
compete with Facebook in that space.

------
dgregd
So Android will have a new feature. You take a picture of a restaurant or
something else and then see search results for that object. Including reviews,
prices in other shops.

~~~
sandipc
sounds like a more mature version of Google Goggles

