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July 21, 2007

Google Acquires ImageAmerica

Duncan Riley

37 comments »

imageamerica.jpgGoogle has announced the acquisition of Clayton, Missouri based ImageAmerica, a company that builds high-resolution cameras for the collection of aerial imagery.

ImageAmerica has previously provided images for Google Maps and Earth, including high-resolution black and white imagery of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

Stephen Chau, Project Manager of Google Maps and Earth said in a statement that Google was excited “about how ImageAmerica’s technology will contribute to [Google’s] mapping services down the road.”

The acquisition price was not disclosed.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 2:07 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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  1. isedb.com

    July 21st, 2007 at 5:28 am

  2. 破百的老兵

    July 22nd, 2007 at 7:21 am

  3. Google acquires ImageAmerica : Blog & WordPress

    August 2nd, 2007 at 1:21 pm

Comments

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  1. Sir Elkbany

    July 21st, 2007 at 3:43 am

    This article is completely uninteresting.

  2. Duncan Riley

    July 21st, 2007 at 3:52 am

    Sir Elkbany
    If ImageAmerica’s website didn’t consist of a message saying “we were acquired by Google” and if Google hadn’t deleted the cache version (they did, I checked) it would have been much more interesting, unfortunately all we have is a statement from Google. Goolge acquiring anything is news. I’m sorry we don’t have more details, no one else does from what I can see either.

  3. bdb

    July 21st, 2007 at 4:18 am

    Off-topic: Duncan, BBC is covering something called “Stir Sydney”, anything cool going on there?

  4. AP

    July 21st, 2007 at 4:26 am

    Well, there are other search engines, you know. for example, Yahoo. it still got some juice there.

    – i work for yahoo –

  5. Lokesh

    July 21st, 2007 at 4:36 am

    Oooh..! there are lot of non google guys too,

  6. john69

    July 21st, 2007 at 5:05 am

    –Breaking–

    Google built 3 new toilets with cosmoflash.

  7. Findlay

    July 21st, 2007 at 5:56 am

    Perhaps a better acquisition for Google than Youtube was.

  8. Rex Dixon

    July 21st, 2007 at 6:19 am

    Well Clayton, MO is technically speaking only like 3 miles from here. :) That is cool though that Google looks even in my dark corner (or should that be humid corner) of the country.

    Rex

  9. Anatoly

    July 21st, 2007 at 7:43 am

    Up next, the potential acquisition of Granite Construction, the builder of roads and bridges that the google cars (Chevy Cobalts, but not for long — Google Cobalts are coming!) drive on to acquire their information for streetview.

  10. Clyde Smith

    July 21st, 2007 at 8:26 am

    I’m currently brainstorming products that will fit our privacy needs for the day when people can watch me in my backyard live on Google Earth.

    I would encourage others to do the same. I’m not positioned to make any money off my ideas but I don’t care, I just want to be able to keep doing the crazy stuff I do without having an audience!

  11. Ria Day

    July 21st, 2007 at 9:17 am

    Here is a little more info on ImageAmerica. Agree though that not a whole lot of info is out there about this company.

    http://www.bizorigin.com/2007/.....ok-better/

  12. matt

    July 21st, 2007 at 10:26 am

    Google is finally losing focus.

  13. Andrew

    July 21st, 2007 at 10:35 am

    is Google the only site that caches webpages?

    Just go to http://web.archive.org/web/*/imageamerica.com and you can see a history of that website

    This just goes to show, that we are so dependent on Google that they essentially can control the internet for content

  14. David Mackey

    July 21st, 2007 at 10:49 am

    Interesting acquisition. Will they sell these high-end cameras or only use them internally?

  15. patricia

    July 21st, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Interesting. I wonder what Google has planned.

  16. Chris

    July 21st, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    I’m sorry, I dont see the point of this acquisition considering Google core business. A strategic partnership? sure. An acquisition? no.

    Yes, maybe they want to deny Microsoft and others access to the technology. But wouldn’t that be anti-competitive? Such as, hmm…blocking Google in Windows Vista?

  17. Shakir Razak

    July 21st, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    Duncan,

    Could you please find out Why does Google keep closing the individual websites of any acquisition that isn’t a content company.

    They are everything they claim they are not such as the effort to contact them not electronically, blog-comment difficulty, lack of privacy/statements, etc; and to actively delete their cache of an acquired company -it’ll only become worse, unless their given an early public slap on the wrist!

    Kind regards,

    Shakir Razak

  18. Rishi

    July 21st, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    @Andrew
    Actually, the domain name has a “-” in it, so heres the cache of the website, from 2001 to February 2007 :
    http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.image-america.com/

    Without bashing on Duncan, it would have been easy to get more details on the site for reporting purposes.

  19. jose

    July 21st, 2007 at 4:07 pm

    Very little information. What comes next? Google buying a toilet paper factory. We all use internet, but we all go to the bathroom too.

  20. Jessica Mah

    July 21st, 2007 at 5:44 pm

    Google is acquiring soooo many companies! Is it becoming too much? I have friends who work at Google who agree that they’re becoming more and more like a stereotypical big business is.

    I wonder if this will ever end… what if Google were to turn evil overnight? (yay, a new blog topic!)

  21. mind

    July 21st, 2007 at 7:53 pm

    google has already turned evil. they wouldn’t have deleted the cached version of the old company website before

    they censor parts of satellite maps because of whining from foreign governments, they delete cached versions of old websites, they retain all search history, emails, etc.

  22. flexipoll

    July 21st, 2007 at 8:04 pm

    Take this poll on Google acquisitions:

    flexi poll for your blog

    or try this:

    Which has been the best Google acquisition till now?

  23. Duncan Riley

    July 21st, 2007 at 8:09 pm

    OK
    fair point by some: there are alternatives to Google Cache…and it probably highlights that I’ve become far too dependent to Google for everything, I’ll remember archive.org next time :-)

  24. Planet Malaysia

    July 21st, 2007 at 8:46 pm

    Yes. Google will be another evil like Micro$oft

  25. jose

    July 21st, 2007 at 9:35 pm

    Duncan, What do you think the point is of this deal?

  26. Free Nature Photography Wallpaper

    July 22nd, 2007 at 12:09 am

    this after a huge loss in the market… Soo what are they planning with this? Perhaps selling cameras to towns for security like london… So Google will soon know your emails, what you search for, and …. Where you go!

  27. eas

    July 22nd, 2007 at 1:23 am

    I don’t know the aerial imaging market at all, but it seems to me that there are two good reasons, complimentary to eachother, why Google would buy a company like this.

    First, they want to deny competitors access to a key technology or service. If this company is the clear leader in it’s market, then they have just denied Microsoft access to a potentially important resource.

    Second, they want to make sure they continue to have access to a key technology based service. If Microsoft bought the company instead, they could have cut off Google’s ability to acquire the highest resolution aerial photography, which would hurt their mapping efforts.

    Make no mistake, mapping is very important to Google, because mapping is very important to local services, and locality is a very important piece of context in context specific advertising.

  28. Sufiy

    July 22nd, 2007 at 2:15 am

    Google GOOG Earnings and Growth are Falling further
    The most important ring bell for all Google shareholders should be falling by 12% margin from almost constant before 33% to 29% of revenue. With increase in revenue of 58% Y/Y Google demonstrated falling growth rate of -25% Y/Y. Google network growth is falling even more faster by -38% Y/Y due to heating up competition. Net Income actually fall from 1billion to 0.9 billion comparing to the 1st q 2007. Total cost and Expenses are growing 116% faster then revenue growth rate Q/Q. Sales per head is down by -6%. With all this deteriorating fundamentals investors still were ready to pay last Thursday 548.59 which brings Google to valuation of P/S=12.9, P/E=47, P/FCF=74. Even if Google…
    http://sufiy.blogspot.com/2007.....h-are.html

  29. Clement

    July 23rd, 2007 at 3:30 am

    Mmmmm!Yet another acquisition by Google.How many have they swallowed so far?I like Google but I do not like this business of swallowing other companies.
    Why cant they concentrate on their own R&D and develop leading edge tools?I think they can do it!

  30. omadsense

    July 23rd, 2007 at 5:42 am

    great, so now they own the technology they plan to continue crossing the privacy boundry with…..

  31. Rb

    July 23rd, 2007 at 6:58 am

    @ #12 “Google losing focus?”

    Your a complete moron; the maps market is huge, and they are working at being the best …

    RB

  32. bside

    July 23rd, 2007 at 11:47 am

    IA has a fast airplane with a *patented* camera mounted in it, and can apparently turn around these maps extremely quickly. They could have bought them solely for the protection of the patent on the camera, to ensure they continue to have highres imagery… or of course to also lock out others from such capability…

  33. catchkin

    July 23rd, 2007 at 1:02 pm

    Hmm good !
    Will Google be a kingdom ?

  34. Federico Campo Piombi

    July 24th, 2007 at 5:48 am

    Of course, that’s why they’re so interested in aerial imagery.. perhaps they’re looking for a pice of land to start “GLand”.. a country where you can get a free GBlock with your Gmail account. Maybe they took Second Life too serious.

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