Why Google Buys Companies

Google为什么买人家的公司

这篇文章的结构使我想起当年高中文科的政治，先把一些乱七八糟的原则规律背下来，然后分析试卷上的案例，根据文字表面和背后的意思把乱七八糟的原则规律以更乱的方式归类后堆在一起就可以拿分了。
Why Google Buys Companies by Philipp Lenssen
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-25-n19.html

Watching Google from the outside – with the limited information that offers – it seems they buy companies mainly to get more:

从旁观者的角度看-在非常有限的信息的基础上-他们收购公司主要为了获得更多的：

• Data. Like articles, meta data, digital archives, photographs.
• Users. Or in more general terms, customers or market share.
• Technology. Mostly, that’s software, like web or desktop applications.
• Developers. Or, in more general terms, call it employees.
• 数据。比如文章，元数据，数字存档，图片。
• 用户群。或者更广泛一些，客户或者是市场份额。
• 技术。大部分是软件，比如网上的或者是桌面的。
• 开发人员。或者通俗一点讲，雇员。
  

Some of above items are interrelated; especially with technology and developers, there’s not always a clear distinction.

上面有的内容本身就是重叠的；特别是技术和开发人员本来就没有清晰的区分。

Furthermore, Google sometimes invests in foreign partners out of legal or political necessity, like when they partner with Tianya or Ganji in China; or they may subsidize a company to skew the market in disfavor of competitors... e.g. when they pay Mozilla developers to progress Firefox, or pay Mozilla when users search Google using Firefox, to balance the market against Microsoft Internet Explorer. While there isn’t a lot of evidence it may also be possible they sometimes buy companies just to silence a competitor, or to prevent a competitor from acquiring it and growing too strong. The philanthropic arm of Google, called Google.org, also invests in green energy and more to improve the world at large. But again, as we don’t sit inside Google’s strategic company meetings, much of this is just speculation.

此外有时候Google投资国外的公司还出于法律或者政治上的需要。比如他们在中国就和天涯和赶集网进行合作；或者他们在一家公司上砸钱就是为了让对手的日子不好过...比如他们资助Mazilla的开发者开发Firefox，用户在使用Firefox的时候通过Google搜索Mazillo也可以拿到钱，为的是平衡几乎被微软IE吞并的浏览器市场。还有一种可能，虽然拿不出多少证据，他们收购一家公司目的是威慑竞争对手，或者不要让竞争对手抢去变得异常的强大。Google博爱之手称作Google.org，主要是在绿色能源和改进世界等方面投资。但是我们不是坐在Google公司战略会议上，这些仅仅是推测。

The end goal of acquiring a company may be aligned with Google’s overall mission. We can paraphrase it as 1) grab all the world’s data, 2) make that data useful and accessible in order to direct user attention towards it, 3) profit from ads displayed with the data. Google’s hardware business aside, the company indeed just sells attention. If you look at it from a bird’s view, you could perhaps split up Google’s goals into the two philosophies make money (more the manager or ad sales types) and build the ultimate AI (the developer types). Ideally, these two camps work hand in hand, as the ultimate AI would generate the ultimate user attention generating loads of money.

收购公司的终目的可能都可以和Google的使命挂上钩。我们可以从下面几个方面阐释：1）搜刮世界上所有的数据，2）把这些数据利用起来并对外开放目的是把用户的注意力吸引过来，3）在显示数据的同时投放广告，并从中获利。Google的硬件生意就是为了赚眼球。如果像上帝一样审视Google你可能会把Google的目标分解成两个理念挣钱（更多是是经营者或广告销售的想法）和建造终极人工智能（更多是开发者的想法）。幸运的是这两个阵营是齐头并进的，终极人工智能可以吸引超多的用户注意力然后就是哗啦啦的银子。
This whole mission is then accompanied by a moral framework that started with “do no evil” and changed to “do good,” a more traditional but less powerful construct as it transcends from a restrictive consideration to a potentially restriction-free justification... a self-referential “do Google.”

这一使命和公司的道德框架紧密联合在一起，公司信条也慢慢从不干坏事变成做好事，一个更传统但不是那么张扬的概念，也证明他们从自我约束阶段向无约束的转变...自卖自夸的“Google一下”。

Looking at past acquisitions

回顾一下之前的收购

Here is a limited selection of Google’s many past acquisitions, checked mainly against the four parameters data, users, technology, and developers:

这儿有一份Google收购公司的不完全清单，主要是从数据，用户群，技术和开发者几个方面分析。

• In 2001, Google acquired Deja’s usenet archive. This seems to have been done simply to get more data... the archive contained over 500 million discussion group postings, Google stated back then, saying that “Usenet and its thriving community is one of the most active and valuable information sources on the Internet.” Today, Google displays advertisements next to these messages. They also utilize the archive as a bit of a lure to get people to sign-up with Google Groups, a discussion group tool merging usenet and Google’s own groups software. A good groups search was also beneficial for Google’s search engine soul, though they removed the link from the main homepage links after some time (currently putting it in the “more” menu on the homepage).
• 2001年Google买下了Deja的usenet的存档数据。这次收购好像纯粹是冲着数据来的...这份存档中有超过5个亿的小组讨论帖子。在那个时候Google说Usenet和他们高速增长的社区是互联网上最活跃也是最有价值的信息来源之一。今天Google在这些帖子旁边推出广告。他们还利用获得的存档吸引人们加入Google Groups，一款整合usenet和Google自己的讨论组软件的服务。一款优秀的讨论组搜索对Google自身的看家搜索引擎也非常的有利，尽管过了一段时间他们把这一讨论组搜索链接从主页上拿掉了（现在可以在主页上的更多目录下找到）。（译者注：了解usenet请参见阮一峰的网志USENET简介 ）
  
• In 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs/ Blogger. Having a working blogging technology might have given Google a chance to be ahead of competition, but I would find it hard to imagine that was the actual reason they acquired this company. Moving the software, which worked sluggish for years, to their own system might in fact have caused more trouble than building an in-house application would have. Rather, it’s more likely Google simply acquired blogger to get the existing users (all those who signed up with Blogger and produced posts) as well as the data (every word written on a Blogspot blog resides on Google’s servers, so they may more easily index and analyze it).
• 2003年Google买下了Pyra Labs/ Blogger。把一家正在运行的博客服务商收归旗下可能使Google在竞争中领先一步，但是很难讲这是Google收购这家公司的真正原因。事实上把原来漏洞百出的软件搬到他们自己的系统上比自己建一个博客系统麻烦更大。更靠谱的是Google买下Blogger只是为了拿下已有的用户（所有在Blogger注册并发帖的用户）和数据（在Blogspot博客上写的每一个字都到了Google的服务器上，这样更便于他们检索分析 ）。
• Also in 2003, Google bought Kaltix. Larry Page at the time stated, “Kaltix is working on a number of compelling search technologies, and Google is the ideal vehicle for the continued development of these advancements.” This seems to be an example of a technology as well as developer acquisition.
• 还是在2003年Google买下了Kaltix。当时Larry Page说Kaltix在研制一些非常尖端的搜索技术，Google正好给这些正在开发的先进技术提供一个大显身手的舞台。这应该是一个技术加开发者收购的例子。
• In 2004, Google acquired a stake in Baidu. The shares are sold by now, but finding a local partner in China might well have been out of political reasons, indirectly triggered by legal restrictions of not being able to simply offer their own technology due to China censorship.
• 2004年Google买了Baidu的股份。现在这些股份已经卖出去了，但是在中国找一家当地的合作者主要是出于政治原因考虑，因为中国的审查制度的在法律上的限制，他们无法把自己的技术拿到中国来，只好这样绕个圈子。
  
• In 2004, Google acquired the Picasa desktop software. The application is for photo management. I find it hard to tell what this acquisition was good for; the technology of photo management seems trivial in relation to some of Google’s other undertakings. Perhaps this was a bulk developer acquisition, in terms of quickly adding the right team for Google’s photo management strategy. In a press release from mid-2004, Google argued, “Picasa is an innovator in the field of digital photography, and we’re excited that the Picasa team is joining Google.” Out of Picasa’s offline suite at Google grew Picasa Web Albums, a product not unlike Flickr.
• 2004年Google买下了Picasa桌面软件。这款软件是用来管理照片的。我想不出这次收购会带来什么好处；和Google别的项目比较起来管理照片有点太小儿科了。可能这是一次大规模的对开发者的收购，在短时间内的向Google照片管理策略中补充合适的团队。在2004年7月份的新闻发布会上Google说：“Picasa在数字成像技术方面独具创新，我们非常高兴的是Picasa的开发团队能加入Google。”从Picasa的离线版本发展出来的Picasa在线相册和Flickr倒是有点神似。
  
• In 2004, Google also acquired Keyhole Inc. In a page copyrighted to 2004, Keyhole advertises its product that was later turned into Google Earth: “Keyhole 2 LT is a software application that you download and install. It’s only 9MB, but with an annual Keyhole subscription, you can fly through 12+ Terabytes of Earth imagery and data – spinning, rotating, tilting, and zooming. Think magic carpet ride.” More than a data acquisition – Google still needs to license satellite data from e.g. Tele Atlas, DMapas, Navteq, Geographic Data Technology Inc, MapData Sciences, Georoute IGN France – this was possibly a developer and technology acquisition.
• 在2004Google还收购了Keyhole Inc.在一份可以追溯到2004年的一份版权声明上Keyhole是这样宣传后来变成Google Earth的软件的：“Keyhole 2 LT是一款你可以下载安装的软件。软件大小只有9MB，但是只要每年在Keyhole进行的订阅你就可以纵览超过12TB的地球图片和数据-旋转，翻转，倾斜放大缩小都在弹指间。想象一下魔毯的神奇之旅吧。”这次除了获得了数据，Google还需要从诸如Tele Atlas, DMapas, Navteq, Geographic Data Technology Inc, MapData Sciences, Georoute IGN France等公司得到卫星地图使用的授权-这次是对开发者和技术的收购。
• In 2005, Google snapped up Dodgeball. Like the addition of many other mobile companies – Reqwireless, Android, AllPay, Zingku – this seems to have been Google trying to get a foothold in a market area where they might not feel positioned strong enough. In the case of Dodgeball it seems hard to imagine they did it for the Dodgeball user base; perhaps it was just to get the Dodgeball developers on board to speed up Google’s own mobile projects (existing Dodgeball technology may have been a reason as well). The Dodgeball founders weren’t too happy with what happened to them at Google, though. When they called it quits in 2007, they gave the company a thumbs-down and said, “It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us – especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.”
• 2005年Google把Dodgeball收归旗下。就像后来出现的好多针对移动领域的公司-Reqwireless，Android，AllPay，Zingku-这好像是Google为了在一个自己没有太大把握的市场环境里站住脚的举动。从Dodgeball的情况看很难想象他们居然会这样对待Godgeball的用户群，或许他们主要的目的是把Dodgeball的工程师拉过来开发Google自己的移动项目（现有的Dodgeball技术也可能是收购的原因之一）。但是Dodgeball的创始人对于Google这样的对待不是很开心。2007年他们离开的时候他们对这家公司的评价并不怎么样，他们讲，“”Google不像我们想的那样支持Dodgeball已经不是什么秘密了。对我们来说真是一次意想不到的糟糕经历。-特别是我们无法说服他们Dodgeball是一项值得开发的项目，他们只是让我们眼睁睁地看着别的刚起步的公司在移动+社交领域大显身手。”
  
• In 2006, Google acquired YouTube. According to an ex-Google employee, many people inside Google were surprised at the acquisition of the video site at the time, saying “But they have no technology!?” Google already had the technology in-house, named Google Video (superior, too, just considering technology and not the social side). However, YouTube was also ridiculously popular with many people, and a whole lot of YouTube videos were embedded in blogs, directing a whole lot of attention towards them (with attention being Google’s main product, in a way, as mentioned above). So this was both a video data and video user acquisition. And considering the YouTube team continues to work partly separated, perhaps it was also a developer/ employee acquisition – Google buying a company that “gets” communities. Today, YouTube continues to thrive and YouTube video results are more visibly integrated into Google web search results (receiving special rating stars in the seemingly neutral web search results). The Google Video program director Jennifer Feikin, on the other hand, left the company last year.
• 2006年Google买下了Youtube。据一位前Google员工说不少Google内部的人对这次视频网站的收购感到吃惊，他们说“他们没有什么技术啊！？”Google已经有自己的技术了，就是Google视频（如果不考虑社交因素但从技术层面上讲还更强大）。但是Youtube却令人难以置信的火爆，很多Youtube的视频被嵌在网志里，这一点就给他们带来不少关注的眼球（就像上面提到了，从一方面讲关注度也是Google的一大主要产品）。因此这是一次视频数据和视频用户的收购。再加上Youtube团队会继续单独在原来的项目上工作，这也算是一次开发者/员工的收购-Google会买可以带来社区氛围的公司。今天Youtube继续告诉增长Youtube的视频结果在Google网页搜索结果中的位置更加醒目（在看似中立的网页搜索结果中享受特殊的排名）。但是Google视频项目的主管Jennifer Feikin却在去年离开了Google。
• In 2006, Google also announced the acquisition of Neven Vision. The company focuses on image object recognition. As such, it is most likely to have been added to Google’s repertoire due to technology and Neven Vision developers. The Picasa product manager in 2006 said Neven Vision comes to Google with “deep technology and expertise”.
• 2006年Google还宣布收购了Neven Vision。这家公司专注于图像物体识别技术。就这点而论凭技术和Neven Vision的开发者他们最可能被加到Google的产品目录里。2006年Picasa的产品项目经理说Neven Vision给Google带来了深层次的专业技术。
• Google also acquired Writely in 2006. This product was turned into the Google Docs documents editor, so it was likely a developer and technology acquisition. For similar reasons, Google acquired Tonic Systems to help develop their Powerpoint web app clone Google Presentations. With acquisitions like these, you get to wonder what would be the more successful strategy for someone to develop a product for Google: to apply for a job with them and then launch something in-house, seeing it potentially repeatedly shredded apart by the many management layers of this 16,000+ people company... or to just start-up your own company outside, and then get acquired by Google. If the latter would turn out to be easier, it’s probably not the best motivator for Google employees.
• 2006年Google还收购了Writely。这款产品后来变成Google文档编辑器，这可以算是技术和开发者的收购。处于同样的原因Google买下了Tonic Systems以促进他们的幻灯片在线克隆Google展示的开发。有这样的收购先例你可能会想如果有人打算给Google开发产品走哪一条路会更成功：先是到Google工作然后在内部发布一款产品，看着它不停地被这家拥有超过一万六千名员工的公司管理层肢解...或者先在外面创建自己的公司然后被Google买去。如果后者做起来更容易一些但是对Google自己的员工来说不是一个很好的激励做法。
• In 2007, Google started the acquisition of DoubleClick. This seems to be a good example of acquiring a user base, though here the word customer base – all the advertisers using DoubleClick – may be more appropriate. Also, with DoubleClick Google snapped up a lot of employees with good connections in the market, growing their web ad presence closer to the size of a monopoly.
• 2007年Google开始了对Doubleclick的收购。这是一以用户收购为目的的例子，客户群这个词用在这儿更合适一些，所有的广告商都在用Doubleclick。有了Doubleclick Google还淘到不少市场人脉挺旺的员工，发展了自己的网络向行业垄断霸主的地位又近了一步。
  
• In 2007, Google also acquired Gapminder’s Trendalyzer and the team. It seems the motivations to get more user and data can be ruled out almost completely for this acquisition. And while the technology of the software might have been a reason, I would guess Google was mostly interested in grabbing these Scandinavian developers. When Google’s Marissa Mayer welcomed the Gapminder team to Google, she wrote that “[b]uilding flexibility into search, email, and other Google products is critically important”.
• 2007年Google还买下了Gapminder’的Trendalyzer和他们的开发团队。这次的收购动机可以完全排除用户数据因素。这款软件的技术可能是一个原因，我想Google最感兴趣的还是这些斯堪的纳维亚的的开发人员。Google的Marissa Mayer在欢迎Gapminder团队来到Google的时候写道“在搜索引擎，邮件和Google其他的一些产品里加入灵活性是非常重要的”。

Trends in Google’s acquisition strategy

Google采购公司战略的趋势

As the chess master once replied when asked about his favorite piece on the board: “My favorite piece is whichever wins the game.” Google seems to be getting more and more pragmatic about acquisitions in terms of buying whatever advances their strategic interest. Formerly, the focus was slightly more on technology and data acquisitions, while nowadays it’s also often about mere land-grab of user base. But even one of the earliest acquisitions – Blogger – was a lot about users, albeit in a more technical and geeky space (blogging) than e.g. the acquisition start of DoubleClick (hit-the-monkey ads). If Google starts focusing too much on land grab acquisitions though, they may get into legal troubles due to accusations of being a monopoly – just buying market share does not progress technology, which in the end hurts users.

就像在被问到棋盘上最喜欢哪个子时围棋高手回答说“我最喜欢的是赢棋的那个子。”Google会收购任何可以促进他们战略利益的东西，他们的收购也变得越来越现实。之前他们的重点是收购技术和数据，而现在他们做的更多是在用户群方面攻城略地。但是最早的收购之一-Blogger-也是针对用户的，尽管比Doubleclick（点击付费广告）的收购更有技术性和更极客。如果Google开始太关注攻城略地式的收购，他们可能会因为涉嫌垄断惹上官司-只是花钱买市场份额不会促进技术的发展，到最后倒霉的还是用户。

When looking into the future to understand which companies Google might buy next, it still helps to check against all four main parameters. Some companies sole reason of existence seems to be trying to create “Googlebait,” wanting to be snapped up by Google. This hardly seems to work because the goals of a company which has time to think about being acquired are apparently not sufficiently directed towards data, users and technology, perhaps due to a lack of great developers on-board.

要推测将来Google会收购哪些公司还是要参照我们的四条考虑因素。有些公司就是为创建Google饵而存在，幻想着被Google买下来。这基本上行不通因为如果一家公司有时间想着怎样被收购很明显不会太注重数据用户和技术，或者是因为本来就缺乏有能力的开发人员。

Some companies also try to make it seemingly really easy for Google to acquire them, by already working a lot within Google frameworks: RememberTheMilk’s todo suite (which works on top of Google Calendar) or the Zoho office suite (using Google Gears) come to mind. Indeed, Google may look at these companies in terms of adding new good developers to their own teams in that space. However, in many acquisitions Google may also want precisely the opposite, namely to increase their developer knowledge delta. Just buying a team that understands Google may not help Google tackle new problems.

有些公司好像把收购变得更容易一些，他们已经开始研究使用Google的架构：RememberTheMilk的日程安排套装（在Google日历上运行的）或者是Zoho办公套装（使用了Google Gears）就是这一类型的。Google在打算补充一些优秀的开发人员到他们的自己同一领域的团队时确实会在这些公司里找找看。但是在很多时候Google想要的却恰恰相反，说是为了增加他们开发人员的知识三角洲。只是买一支熟悉Google的团队可能对解决新的问题不会有太多帮助。