Mountain View, California — The Internet search engine giant Google, striving to counter the growth of Facebook, continues to determinedly pursue social-networking capabilities, this time with the acquisition of Palo Alto-based startup “Ångströ,” an outfit that built all sorts of apps that hook into “social” sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Google is once again bundling its technology arsenal and talent for what many believe will be a full-on assault against Silicon Valley rival Facebook Inc., or the pot maybe boiling with the focus on its upcoming Google Me social network.
Angstro is a small organization with a few products including Noteworthy News, a service that delivers news about people and companies in a user’s professional network. Angstro, according to a notice on the later’s website, which will be shut down as the founder goes on to work for Google.
In a Friday blog post, Ångströ co-founder Rohit Khare announced that his company had been gobbled up by Mountain View, and though Google has not responded to our request for comment, it confirmed the buy with The New York Times.
“While our work here may be done, the struggle for open, interoperable social networks is still only just beginning,” reads Khare’s blog post, “and I’m looking forward to working on that in my new role at Google.”
“Salim Ismail and I would like to express our gratitude to everyone who has been part of the venture — not least, the thousands of users and beta testers who helped define our products and inspired our whole team,” Khare, wrote.
As part of its strategy to develop a social networking service to counter the explosive growth of Facebook, a service named “Google Me” inside the company, is taking a shot in a concealed mode and Google will not discuss it. The stakes are high for Google. As far as Facebook’s threat to Google’s dominance on the Web is Topic A in Silicon Valley, debated daily by technology executives and investors.
Respected Internet researcher Rohit Khare is one of several new faces at Google endowed with helping the Internet search giant compete for the eyeballs and dollars increasingly flowing to social networking. (David Sifry / August 27, 2010)
Khare says that the idea for developing Angstro was came about four years ago when he “set out to solve a misleading simple problem” involving Google Alerts, the Mountain View service that notifies you when particular keywords hit the web. The problem, Khare says, was that “95% of the Google Alerts I received about the entrepreneur Adam Rifkin were about the Hollywood movie director instead.” Hence, Noteworthy News was designed to deliver more accurate news about people connected to users.
Google’s buying spree indicates that it is coming up with a cohesive social networking strategy, unlike its “disconnected” efforts in the past, such as Google Buzz, the service that launched inside Gmail accounts but has not gained traction, Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray said.
Ångströ is just the latest so-called social startup gobbled up by Google. Last month, it acquired Jambool, an outfit that creates applications for social networks involving virtual currency and virtual goods, and Slide, another social app company.
“It is a big company with a lot of money. They have thrown a lot against the wall to see what works,” he said. “They have reached the point now where they can not just experiment.”