Google Buys Social Startup Ångströ

Enlarge Angstro Home Page

Friday Seems to be Announcement Day At the GooglePlex

Since July Google has been on an acquistion spree buying Social Networking services including its  3 rd consecutive Friday Purchase of social search startup Angstro, In the post announcing the sale there are a few hints about the reasons for and what the the fit is with Google. The bolded text below was added by me for emphasis.

Almost four years ago I set out to solve a deceptively simple problem: 95% of the Google Alerts I received about the entrepreneur Adam Rifkin were about the Hollywood movie director instead.
I worked with Salim Ismail, another “pub/sub” pioneer with a disturbing doppelgänger to co-found Ångströ and unlock the power of your social graph.

With the help of investors like CommerceNet and advisors such as Avery Lyford, our team shipped apps to discover hot new photos on Facebook, improve Caller ID by using LinkedIn profiles, adding style and links to Twitter, create a real-time social address book, and a slew of other services (some of which are open source).

Which would seem they mostly bought Ångströ out for their experience as engineers. There definitely seems to be a pattern to what Google have been buying the last three or 4 months. Small social startups with experienced engineers at scaling Social platforms.

Google made its 25th acquisition since CEO Eric Schmidt’s declaration nearly a year ago that the company was looking to make a purchase a month. Google’s early purchases were spread across many businesses—from mobile to video compression. The company is on an even brisker pace of acquisitions if you include the mobile and other assets being purchased in VC's held by Google or Google Principles.