Gawker: valleywag, measure map

6 startups that fell into Google's "black hole"

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:00:00 EDT

Digg users should be glad merger talks with Google have cooled, writes Slate's Farhad Manjoo. Had Digg fallen into Marissa Mayer's frosting-laced clutches, the site would have probably become another startup lost in what Manjoo calls "the Google Black Hole." It happened to FeedBurner this week. And the RSS ad network, was just the latest, following Jaiku, JotSpot, Dodgeball, GrandCentral, and Measure Map. Their tales of doom in the Googleplex, below.

Acquired in October 2007, Twitter rival Jaiku still doesn't accept new users. Its current ones complain of system slowdowns and malfunctions. On May 30, 2008, founder Jyri Engeström wrote:

Contrary to some voices out there, we DO have plans for future development and we will involve our developer community as much as we can. Just to reiterate, we are working very hard to ensure you have a useful and usable service. We feel the short term pain, too.

Acquired in October 2006, JotSpot is Google Sites now, and according to longtime users, it's not what it used to be.

Purchased in 2005, it took Google six months to assign any new engineers to the project. The founders quit in 2007, and one, Dennis Crowley, will tell any entreprenuer who will listen to reject Google's siren song.

Google acquired GrandCentral, which provides a suite of telephony services, in July 2007, immediately closed it to new users and hasn't opened it since.

Google acquired Measure Map in 2006, hoping to incorporate its features into Google Analytics. "And we did that," reports Google VP David Lawee. Too bad for bloggers who missed Measure Map's blog-specific features and don't use Google's Blogger.

How Google hired the Measure Map team

ndouglas — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 12:04:21 EDT

Another bizarre Google hiring story came through the grapevine. When Google bought Measure Map (scooped and reported here), it cut a special deal with the stat service's makers at Adaptive Path.

The alleged deal: Adaptive Path would agree to let Google hire two members of the team. But AP wouldn't know which ones until after the agreement. Then Google, like an America's Top Model panel, interviewed everyone at AP and scooped up its two favorites.

So Adaptive Path had to sign a contract not knowing which team members would say goodbye. It's almost like seeing a family break up — except the orphans get a six-figure salary.

(By the way, prodigal son #1 was Jeff Veen, who first made Measure Map. AP can't disclose the second new Googler.)

Earlier: Google buys Measure Map [Valleywag]
And: Google eyes Measure Map [Valleywag]

7 names to spell right (and 1 to ignore)

ndouglas — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 20:26:59 EST

Right. Valleywag's been called "ValleyWag" too much to ignore. A quick guide to Valley capitalization, spacing, and punctuation:

del.icio.us
digg
Valleywag
Measure Map
CNET
danah boyd (for typographic beauty)
BoingBoing (or Boing Boing or boing boing, they're too hip to care)

And one not worth getting right, because using it at the end of a sentence sounds stupid:

Yahoo!

No need to thank me for the service journalism. Post your own anal-retentive spelling specs in the comment salon.

Remainders: Esthr keeps disemvowelling

ndouglas — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 20:29:13 EST

"Esthr" Dyson's war on vowels expands past the pre-"r" "e". This time the victims are "accidnts" and "a warm welcm." Flickr is in pain, Esther. Make the hurting stop. [Flickr 1, Flickr 2]
"No two-tiered Internet," said Google. Unless, of course, it's Google's two-tiered Internet. Google and Earthlink partner up to offer free wi-fi with a faster pay version. [Newsvine]
Google loses an Image Search case to a porn company — for competing with the company's mobile business. Yes, some overworked schlubs are buying thumbnailed porn on mobile phones. A service that only the Valley could appreciate. [Financial Times]
Rambus gets sued again: The Los Altos chip patenter's business plan is thus: 1. Go to standards meetings. 2. Quietly patent everyone's standards. 3. Sue everyone who uses them. Then, Rambus investors form flame wars around any discussion of their dirty dealings. Finally, their lawyers have something else to do: Micron's suing them for all of the above. [Techdirt]
Now that Measuremap got bought, it's time for TechCrunch to promote another startup: Blogbeat. "Now with more cowbell," says the Web 2.0 company about its latest revision. Cute. That should attract the Yahoo acquisition team just fine. [TechCrunch]

How to deflect a rumor

ndouglas — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:00:02 EST

You can't go a week without someone saying Google's buying you. And after so long, "no comment" won't cut it.

After all, when Google said "no comment" to the Measure Map rumor, everyone knew that was a cop-out. After all, the company usually flat-out denies rumors when it could get away with subterfuge. Google could use a lesson in rumor deflection:

Wishful thinking
"I wish!" (Kevin Rose used this when a "Yahoo buys Digg" rumor went around.)
"If only!"

Hedged bets
"Well, of course, everything's always for sale."
"Well, of course, everyone talks to everyone."
"If they showed me a billion dollars, I wouldn't be an idiot."

Rhetorical questions best answered "no"
"Wouldn't it be great if we stayed independent?"

What do you recommend? Ever heard a smooth "maybe so, maybe not" deflection?

Earlier: Google eyes Measure Map [Valleywag]

Google buys Measure Map

ndouglas — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 18:19:12 EST

Told ya. If you haven't already seen Jeffrey Veen's post on the Google Blog, the Measure Map creator just left the UI consultants at Adaptive Path and sold his user-friendly stat-tracker to Google. (Of course, Valleywag readers knew it five days ago.)

In his post, Veen doesn't mention Google Analytics, the all-business stat-tracker that cares more about clickthrough rates than conversation. Om Malik says that Google could help Measure Map, which "sucked wind." Assuming the company doesn't kill MM, maybe that cute interface can take some of the ugh out of Analytics.

(Meanwhile, Mint's still the classiest stat-tracker on the market. Will Yahoo scoop it up? Haven't heard any such rumors.)

Here comes Measure Map [Official Google Blog]
Measure Maps Hooks Up With Google [Om Malik]
Measure Map goes to Google [Adaptive Path]
Earlier: Google eyes Measure Map]

Google eyes MeasureMap

Nick Denton — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 14:55:03 EST

Google and Yahoo buy up internet companies like Jerry Seinfeld collects Porsches. One would have thought that one of each model was quite enough, but the internet giants want a garage full of internet companies of every shape and color. So it is with site stats services such as MeasureMap.

Update: It's true.

Since Google acquired Urchin — the service that became Google Analytics — people assumed that MeasureMap would go to Yahoo. MeasureMap displays data such as number of visits, source of traffic, geographicaly distribution of visitors, and does so in a graphically appealing fashion. The service was built by Adaptive Path, the user experience gurus; many of their friends now work at Yahoo, which seemed like a natural acquiror.

However, we hear that it's Google, not Yahoo, that's close to clinching a deal for MeasureMap. The official logic will be this: with Urchin's raw power and MeasureMap's friendly design, Google Analytics will be unbeatable. Translation: it's so pretty, I've got to have it, so what if I already have one.