Maybe Google Just wanted Jaiku’s Knowledge?
by Ewan Spence
A brave new world for Jaiku, clenched to the generous bosom of their new Mama Morton in Google? Perhaps stepping back and thinking again might be more appropriate, because it’s a lot easier to come up with companies purchased by Google and then have one or two jewels cherry picked out by the Mountain View, CA based company, with everything else left to wither. Ars Technica reminded me of Urchin – purchased by Google, the online component became Google Analytics and the rest of the Urchin services, including the paid for server based versions, well… stagnated.
Many have wondered why Google plumped for Jaiku and not Twitter – well if you’re going with the assumption that Google is not wanting everything in the system. But just a few rough diamonds, then it could become clearer. In recent weeks Google has not only switched on its mobile Adsense product, but picked up Zingku, a mobile social network. It certainly strengths their depth in the mobile telecoms structure. Jaiku not only has a good platform of users , but has managed to successfully integrate a web based community with a mobile based community built around ‘presence.’
A handful of commentators, and myself among them, are considering that buying Jaiku isn’t a technology play, but a Human Resource play.
Looked at through this lens, the value in Twitter is minimal, given that founder Evan Williams has already been through the Googleplex and been spat out the other end with Google’s purchase of Blogger. Grabbing the minds behind Jaiku, who themselves are former Nokia engineers is probably worth the rumoured $12 million price ticket You can argue either way in the comments if this is a sign of an impending GooglePhone, a big mobile Operating System play, or something more sinister with wireless spectrum and presence applications. In summary, it does mean Google is doing something with mobile.
But this of course could leave Jaiku going down the same route as Urchin, Jot and others, by going absolutely nowhere again in terms of software updates. At least it has a full feature set that we can still use – I just wish that they’d manage to get the S60 client running over WiFi as well as a cellular connection.
