Interesting Read: Why Google Bought Wildfire
Google paid $250 million for Wildfire, one of the platforms you can use for running sweepstakes on Facebook. This interesting post gives 4 possible reasons for the purchase; the one that grabbed me the most was the last one about how Google may have intentions to do to Wildfire and the space what they did to the web analytics space with Google Analytics. I’d love that!!
4. Kill the Category
Google may want to kill the social media management software business in the nest, so Salesforce, Oracle and the other acquirers of the big players don’t get too much of a foothold in the “platform of the future” and social CRM. If they make Wildfire free, and also make it the best or only way to do Google + well for companies, what does that do to Buddy, Vitrue, Syncapse, etc?There is most definitely a precedent for this, as Google bought web analytics company Urchin (which was approximately third in the market, the way Wildfire is now). Google then added a bunch of features, changed the name to Google Analytics, dropped the price to ZERO and proceeded to all but kill Webtrends, Omniture and every other expensive software package companies were using for analytics. Interestingly, Webtrends for big sites cost back then about what Vitrue and Buddy cost today.
Google doesn’t need to make money on Wildfire. But it sure as hell can prevent Salesforce and Oracle from making money on Buddy, Involver, and the rest.
Also loving this line:
Google and Facebook aren’t exactly pals. It’s basically the cold war, with Google as the Soviets; Facebook as the USA; and Twitter as….I guess the British.