Google has agreed to acquire Meebo, a social messaging and advertising company established in 2005. Meebo was originally created to let users chat with each other across different instant message services —it then became a social toolbar company and an ad platform.
Meebo raised $25 million in its last round of financing in 2010. The round was led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Sequoia Capital. The company has raised $62.5 million to date. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But Meebo’s acquisition was for around the rumored $100 million.
Meebo in a blog post stated ‘Together with Google, we’re super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike.’ That was not enough to know exactly why Google had to acquire the company for an undisclosed amount.
In a statement published by Google as published on Forbes Google said “We are always looking for better ways to help users share content and connect with others across the web, just as they do in real life.”
Google has further stated that-“With the Meebo team’s expertise in social publisher tools, we believe they will be a great fit with the Google+ team.” Obviously the meebo team has been ‘acqhired ‘.
Google has not yet determined the fate of Meebo’s existing products, which includes a messaging app and social toolbar. Meebo’s products could be shelved like all the other numerous that have been buried.
BusinessInsider could not have explained it any better-‘Google might be buying Meebo to bolster its online-advertising business. Or it might be keen on Meebo’s social-discovery tools to bolster Google+.’
Google has given The Next Web an indication that they are interested in Meebo’s staff, and that whatever employees come over will be joining the Google+ team.
In a post released by Techcrunch, Eric Eldon said ‘we’ve learned that the product team will be using its expertise to help build out publisher tools for Google+. We don’t know if this means there’ll be some sort of new Google+ toolbar coming. But, presumably the existing Meebo properties will be morphed into G+ or otherwise closed.’