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May 14, 2006

Gtalkr Shuts Down - Possible Google Acquisition

Michael Arrington

32 comments »

I just got word that Denver-based Gtalkr shut down yesterday and the founders, brothers Wes and Dudley Carr, have taken jobs at Google.

Gtalkr was a really cool Flash desktop/homepage tool that integrated gmail, gtalk and Yahoo maps (Yahoo has a Flash API, Google doesn’t). It launched in November 2005 and had a significant feature update in February. I’m sad to see it go, Gtalkr was one of my favorite apps.

I’ve pinged Wes Carr for the details. The last I heard from him he was closing an angel round of financing. Things obviously changed.

Update: I just spoke with Wes Carr, one of the founders. Wes was able to answer only some of my questions. In answer to “were you acquired?” he said “no comment, I cannot comment on that” which tell me that yes, they were acquired. Wes and Dudley will be moving to the Kirland, WA Google office within two weeks, both have accepted jobs as engineers. Wes also said that “they were very happy with the outcome”.

Wes had clearly been instructed by Google on what exactly he could and could not say. Again, that tells me that an acquisition took place - if it hadn’t, there would not have been those restrictions.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 14th, 2006 at 6:06 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Robert Dewey

    May 14th, 2006 at 6:10 am

    Are you sure there wasn’t some sort of acquisition of Gtalkr going on? Perhaps Google picked up both the service and the team?

  2. Michael Arrington

    May 14th, 2006 at 6:12 am

    No, I’m not sure. All I have to go on right now is what they wrote on Gtalkr and on their blog (both linked). I’ll post an update after I talk with Wes. I have IM and emails in to him.

  3. Mike Johnston

    May 14th, 2006 at 6:39 am

    Mysterious disappearance huh?

  4. Bill Wilson

    May 14th, 2006 at 7:27 am

    Its a sign of things to come. A lot of these features are going to fold in the next 12 months…

  5. Nuno Bastei

    May 14th, 2006 at 9:31 am

    This sounds very odd, as they were very warmly welcoming 2006. Acquisition?

  6. kosmar

    May 14th, 2006 at 10:18 am

    (can i get my password back then?) too bad, gtalkr was an awesome project and a great showcase for ajax vs. flash.
    maybe google wasnt as pleased as i was, that they included y!maps and flickr so seamless …

  7. Chris Black

    May 14th, 2006 at 10:50 am

    This seems to be one of the risks involved with so many new services popping up. It makes you wonder how attatched we should get to them.

  8. RBA

    May 14th, 2006 at 12:27 pm

    #5 When someone executes an acquisition, usually the service being acquired follows a “transition” process. You just don’t shut it down. I don’t know what happened and don’t really care that much, but it does look a bit odd.

    #6 why would Google be pleased that they used a - IMHO - superior API from one of their key competitors? That by itself doesn’t seem to be reason to go and jump on them IMO, But regardless of what really happened, I don’t think there’s a question about being pleased/unpleased.

    #7 Indeed. However it’s not the number of projects but who’s behind them. When projects are put out there by a couple of guys without a business plan, the risk of users being left out in the cold is even higher than in dotcom bubble times. Not because of the risk of someone with big pockets may make their day (after all, only a handful of “companies” will follow that path, and usually that should be a good thing), but for many other reasons.

  9. Phillip G

    May 14th, 2006 at 4:03 pm

    Does anybody have this site in screenshots?

  10. ajax4ever

    May 14th, 2006 at 4:12 pm

    Flash sucks!

  11. Jon Henshaw

    May 14th, 2006 at 5:09 pm

    Check out Google’s cache. The download link is still live too.

    http://tinyurl.com/s83vk

  12. Sohail Mirza

    May 14th, 2006 at 9:18 pm

    This is really sad to see. I know people that are reliant upon Gtalkr to get through their work firewall because no other client will work. So this is really shutting down a great avenue for Gtalk users to be able to continue using the service.

    I only hope the intention in shutting it down is so that Google can replace it with a better offering.

  13. TomPic

    May 14th, 2006 at 10:10 pm

    Yes, Gtalkr was the only service allowing to use Google talk behind coorporate firewall…

    Any idea about a replacement ?

    Tom

  14. Lucas Zingano

    May 15th, 2006 at 1:38 am

    Hey, dont worry… probably Google will just take this guys to improve GMail chat and GTalk… heh I wouldnt be surprised to see some GTalkr features on GTalk very soon ;-)

  15. Ohad

    May 15th, 2006 at 4:51 am

    So another web desktop dies.
    It feels like the market is growing on a daily basis and some players are going to become obsolete, especially once the big boys start playing (Google, MS and Yahoo are already dipping in to this market)

  16. Danon

    May 15th, 2006 at 4:58 am

    My hope is that the acquisition was/is based on the quality and functionality of the Gtalkr portal. I can’t imagine Google wanting to acquire the company, hire the designers as engineers without also wanting to incorporate what they’ve already done into their GoogleTalk platform.

    The website/homepage RSS/EMAIL/CHAT/Photo/Video/Weather/Calendar/ is a no brainer concept that no-one had done properly or creatively until Dudley and Wes put it out there.

    To Google: My hope is that Gtalkr will resurface with Google’s official blessings and with these guys at the helm of development.

  17. Gatomalo

    May 16th, 2006 at 8:38 am

    I liked Gtalkr, when I look at yahoo’s new homepage just makes think. Google has make thier customized homepage look a little better..and implementing Google talk on the homepage or through about a bunch of its products like calander would be great.

    And I like tom pic would like a suggestion for that old tricky coorporate firewall.

  18. Colin C.

    May 17th, 2006 at 2:19 pm

    People keep saying they can’t use other clients at work because of their firewall. But why aren’t these people using Meebo to talk with other GTalk people? Meebo has the capability and is browserbased.

  19. Robyn Z Moon

    October 14th, 2006 at 8:32 pm

    Google is a smart company. I have to believe they will offer Gtalkr again. Ajax has become to valuable to ignore.

  20. David Ruiz

    December 21st, 2006 at 10:31 am

    Is there any way to get in touch with Wes and/or Dudley? I’m interested in getting copies of a few the Gush IM icons and was wondering whether those are now the property of Google.

    I’ve been chatting with the folks at Yellow Icon/IconBase who developed the icons (Everaldo specifically) but they no longer have the icon files.

    DR

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