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September 27, 2007

Google Acquires Mobile Platform Operator Zingku

Duncan Riley

29 comments »

zingku.jpgGoogle has entered an agreement to acquire “certain assets and technology” from mobile platform operator Zingku.

According to Zingku:

Our service is designed from the mobile phone, outward, allowing you to create and exchange things of interest ranging from invitations to “mobile flyers” with friends in a trusted manner. On the mobile phone, Zingku uses standard text messaging and picture messaging features that come with every phone. On the web, our service uses your standard web browser and instant messenger. There is nothing to install.”

We don’t have a lot of information about the company (including location; there are no details on their site) although a Google search would suggest that the company may have been funded by Flagship Ventures. If we find any more details we’ll update the post. The acquisition price was not disclosed.

(via Google Blogscoped)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 4:07 pm 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. Kanute

    September 27th, 2007 at 4:14 pm

    Google wants to get its tentacles everywhere

  2. PTC

    September 27th, 2007 at 4:15 pm

    so its one more now :-)

  3. Ed

    September 27th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

    One more? One more business venture that could go downhill and cost Google money? :)

  4. Garth Hall

    September 27th, 2007 at 4:26 pm

    A few more details here : http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/

  5. Aidan Henry

    September 27th, 2007 at 4:30 pm

    What is Google planning to do with this company? Their mobile strategy isn’t overly clear to me…

    I just hope they don’t get into a habit of buying random start-ups without a long-term cohesive plan (ala Yahoo).

    Cheers,
    Aidan Henry
    http://www.MappingTheWeb.com

  6. rc

    September 27th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    good article
    thanx

    rc
    trading tennis blog

  7. Helort

    September 27th, 2007 at 4:45 pm

    Location: Waltham, MA

  8. Al Gore

    September 27th, 2007 at 5:13 pm

    Zingu, Pingu, Dingu… what’s next?

  9. Ritu

    September 27th, 2007 at 5:26 pm

    Another acquisition! Since its launch google has acquired 43 of them, I think, is this the 44th or the 45th one?

  10. Andrew

    September 27th, 2007 at 5:32 pm

    And out of the 45…only a few actaully came back instead of dying a horrible death

  11. patrick smith

    September 27th, 2007 at 5:50 pm

    The domain’s registered to Sami Shalabi in Waltham, MA.

    He has a site http://samishalabi.com that confirms that he’s a co-founder of Zingku.

    And it looks like a little less than a year and a half ago he left IBM for Zingku (http://app.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/1738/)

    Congrats, Sami and team.

  12. annonymous coward

    September 27th, 2007 at 5:56 pm

    This site has the addres (not sure if its legit)
    http://www.w2forum.com/i/Zingku
    Btw, u shud have tried Yahoo! search :)

  13. Chuck

    September 27th, 2007 at 6:10 pm

    Dying a horrible death?

    Most of Google’s acquisitions as shown on Wikipedia (I know, I know) either are either still running (YouTube, FeedBurner, JotSpot, Picassa), have been or will be rolled into new or existing Google products(Zenter, Endoxon, @Last) or are just underlying tech that work with a number of Google products.

    From all appearances this will get them further into the mobile market (gPhone anyone?). Their mobile strategy seems pretty simple to me. Become a player. Once they are a player, they can leverage in what they do best, advertise.

  14. Eric

    September 27th, 2007 at 6:28 pm

    The service they offer seems pretty cool. Don’t know why this technology isn’t something Dodgeball couldn’t have rolled out itself… but I suppose Google has money to throw around.

  15. Smart choice

    September 27th, 2007 at 6:29 pm

    I think Google is Genius… They are making future wireless Google Operating system to connect future PLAN 9.

    Linux can’t do it.

  16. maygle

    September 27th, 2007 at 6:42 pm

    google wants YOU - Anyone,google in the wake of YOU ;)

  17. Eric Marcoullier

    September 27th, 2007 at 8:15 pm

    @Al Gore — is this another Google entrance exam question?

  18. Don Jones

    September 27th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

    So many acquisitions points to the problem that senior management at Google knows - they’re not innovating fast enough from within. Should make the venture capital guys happy, though…

  19. Fabian Schonholz

    September 27th, 2007 at 10:32 pm

    @17 - I would tend to agree with you. At some point large companies dry up and they need to find new blood in order to restart the creative/innovation process. I am not sure that Google is there, but all these purchases point to that or at least, not getting to the dried up stage through incorporating new blood sooner rather than later. Yahoo! on the other hand, I think has been there for a while and unfortunately acquisitions will not help because the culture of innovation might have been lost. My only proof is that either Yahoo! chooses bad companies to buy or they do not leverage properly the acquisitions.

    I am writing a blog post on my blog that talks about Technology Innovation, the process, and the strategic ramifications of ultimately owning an innovation culture. Not ready yet, but coming soon!! :)

  20. Gautam Kishore

    September 28th, 2007 at 12:54 am

    Any idea about what google is going to do with zingku? May be something like what i have stated here http://googlelogs.blogspot.com.....oogle.html

  21. Luiz Cruz

    September 28th, 2007 at 5:08 am

    More details here : http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/

  22. dave

    September 28th, 2007 at 8:35 am

    sami shalabi was an iris employee, then ibm etc….his profile is on linkedin with full details…mussie shore was involved (ex lotus - genius, did work on notes and co-created lotus quickplace), marty fahey was involved (ex lotus, former ceo of webhire, former gm of lotus, big dude), james kebinger was involved (ex ibm)…

    ALSO - if you want to SEE what they actually do, then check out http://www.ripple9.com - it is a zingku company implementation (you heard it from me dudes)…

    good lord, am i the only fucking person who knows how to do research on the interwebs?????

  23. dave

    September 28th, 2007 at 8:38 am

    btw, you missed the damned headline - google acquired the RIPPLE9 music services - not just zingku…THIS is most of what they were interested in (imho)…again, http://www.ripple9.com - oh, and btw, kebinger left in august (they must have been talking to google back then too)…he is now at rbm software…

  24. Greg Harris

    September 28th, 2007 at 9:54 am

    Sounds like they acquired them for the technology. We’ve been doing sms and mobile marketing for a while and I had never heard of them until today.

    While our technology and companies like us do exactly the same thing, we have targeted businesses rather than consumers since we don’t have the VC money to give away text messages by the millions.

    Given that most of us had never heard of them, and that the terms were not disclosed, it’s entirely possible that they did not get bug bucks for it. Sounds like Google got some technology and gave some guys jobs. We’ll see.

  25. Marcelo

    September 28th, 2007 at 11:25 am

    Greats article. Congratulations!

    Thanks,

    Marcelo

  26. John Scrofano

    September 28th, 2007 at 1:55 pm

    What seems very Google-esque about this acquisition is the ux simplicity of the technology. Zingku and ripple9 are like old-school mudd games, submit basic text, get text menu responses, and get what you came for. Being able to post video and pictures from your phone to a “mobile billboard” is also mighty cool and easy….people are very comfortable with sms and mms use on their phone.

    A ‘technology grab’ certainly seems like the plausible explanation here. Google has great mobile functionality for search and maps, but not social networking. I guess they see this as a fast track to enabling functionality to their user base, especially in Orkut. (side wager – I bet they kill the whole “business model focused on indie band promotion” thing…a little tired isn’t it?)

    It all goes to show that this space remains hot. The company that can package the right combination of ‘mobile social networking’ features into a really slick easy to use ux/ui, will be wildly successful. My money remains on seamlessly extending social media from phones to the web, from phones to other phones, and from the web to phones.

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