Dodgeball, a start-up mobile+social networking website, was silently bought by Google back in May 2005. Just last week, the two founders left Google disappointed:
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. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk away from dodgeball, I’m actually looking forward to getting to work on other projects again.
This is a bit surprising and from the picture at Flickr, it doesn’t look good either. Last month, when I had a talk with one of the regional executives of Google, I specifically asked him about Dodgeball and how that model was supposed to be viable in the Philippine landscape. I didn’t get a clear answer. So, this is what’s going on in there. Too bad, IMO.
Reminds me. Will MeasureMap suffer the same fate?
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I think the smaller startups that got bought out got lost in the wake of Google’s more major acquisitions - namely Blogger, Urchin, Writely, Youtube. And now, with the $3 billion Doubleclick purchase, chances are, they will never be given the time of day.
Many analysts and pundits believe that Google buys the smaller companies for the talent, not the product/service.
@Migz: although that sounds nice, it’s a one-sided deal, IMO.
yeah and if they do acquire for the sake of the talent, then i think Google should heed the talents more than how much they did those dodgeball guys….
but, i suppose the Big G has its objectives, to which we are alas! obviously oblivious.
sometimes they acquire to kill, like how AOL acquired ICQ in order to make way for IM. I remember when Aol sued Yahoo for copying IM. They lost coz they didn’t patent it. Yahoo still rules.
I don’t think Google has made a competitive acquisition. As for the Dodgeballers, I guess Google thinks that the dream life at the Googleplex fits everyone.