Google Makes Another Mobile Buy
from the googly-woogly dept
Both Google and Yahoo have been making a push into the mobile space of late, both by souping up their mobile search capabilities, and by buying startups. Google a few months back bought mobile social networking service Dodgeball, and has now followed that with the purchase of mobile startup Android. It's hard to say much about this deal, since all that's really known about Andrioid is that it was started by one of the founders of Danger, who's said little beyond that the company makes mobile-phone software. While some are wondering if this means Google will produce a mobile OS, that seems unlikely. BusinessWeek, which broke the story, points to a comment from an old interview from Android's founder, just before he launched the company, saying "there was tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences." That sounds exactly like something Google would be interested in -- adding location awareness to its mobile local search.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
