You know those boxes with funky looking letters that are becoming increasingly common on website registration forms, or on Facebook Pages when you want to post an update? They’re called captchas and they’re used primarily to deter spammers and bots.
One of the biggest providers of the technology is a company called reCAPTCHA, and now, GoogleGoogle owns them. The search giant just announced on their blog that they’re buying reCAPTCHA, which is used on more than 100,000 websites worldwide.
Why exactly does Google want to own this technology? For starters, reCAPTCHA has a unique solution. As Google describes:
“But there’s a twist — the words in many of the CAPTCHAs provided by reCAPTCHA come from scanned archival newspapers and old books. Computers find it hard to recognize these words because the ink and paper have degraded over time, but by typing them in as a CAPTCHA, crowds teach computers to read the scanned text…” Read on at mashable.com
TwitterTwitter is one of the hottest companies around, so it’s no wonder that it’s been the target of numerous acquisition rumors. Most recently, the company’s co-founder Biz Stone refuted reports that Apple was in talks to acquire Twitter by saying “We are not for sale.” However, the game has radically changed over the last two weeks. The game-changer is none other than the world’s largest social network, FacebookFacebook. First, it shook the social media world with its acquisition of FriendFeedFriendFeed. That same day, it launched its rival to Twitter Search. Then more new features like Facebook Lite surfaced. Oh, and Facebook’s still growing pretty steadily as well. Now some are starting to suggest that Twitter should sell. With Facebook breathing down its neck, is it time for Twitter to join a stronger partner? Or are its prospects bright enough that it’s worth the risk of staying the course? Let’s assess both sides of the argument… Read on at mashable.com
MySpaceMySpace is close to acquiring popular social music service iLike, we’ve confirmed with multiple sources. The deal, which should close this week, will be MySpace’s first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta took control of the company in April 2009. The price is “around $20 million.” iLike, which launched in late 2006, is a social music recommendation service that now has more than 50 million registered users. It tracks what you listen to and like and gives you recommendations on new music based on that data as well as what your friends are listening to. It is the top music application on FacebookFacebook, BeboBebo, Hi5Hi5 and just about every other social network other than MySpace, which has MySpace Music… Read on at TechCrunch.com
FacebookFacebook has acquired FriendFeedFriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.
At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates. Obviously Facebook has already built out some of FriendFeed’s functionality so there is some overlap, but there are still numerous ways FriendFeed beats out Facebook’s News Feed setup. One of these is the way stories are ‘floated’ to the top as new users comment on them. And FriendFeed’s system is truly real-time, unlike Facebook’s feed which users have to manually refresh. But the biggest win here for Facebook is the FriendFeed team, which includes an all-star cast of ex-Googlers. Perhaps best known of these is Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating GmailGmail, pioneering some of GoogleGoogle’s early (and incredibly lucrative) advertising products, and coining Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Other ex-Googler co-founders include Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh… Read on at TechCrunch.com | FriendFeed Blog | Facebook Press Release
Remember Friends Reunited? The social network, once a leader in the UK market and acquired by ITV in 2005 for £175 million, has been sold to Brightsolid, a subsidiary of Beano comic book publisher DC Thomson, for £25 million. Surprisingly, that’s good news: we’d previously reported that ITV was considering an offer of £15 million, which would have meant a 91% loss on their original purchase price.
The Guardian writes of the sale: Brightsolid, which runs ventures including Find My Past, has acquired all the assets of Friends Reunited, including a dating operation, genealogy business and social networking site.
For Brightsolid the most attractive part of the business is Genes Reunited which has millions of members, is still growing and has a solid revenue stream through subscriptions. Via Mashable.com
GoogleGoogle and On2 Technologies jointly announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Google will acquire On2, a developer of video compression technology. The acquisition is expected to close later this year. On2 markets video compression technologies that power high-quality video in both desktop and mobile applications and devices and also holds a number of interesting patents. Some of its codec designs are known as VP3, VP4, VP5, TrueMotion VP6, TrueMotion VP7 and VP8. Its customers include Adobe, SkypeSkype, Nokia, Infineon, Sun Microsystems, Mediatek, Sony, Brightcove, and Move Networks. On2, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, is headquartered in Clifton Park, NY… Read on at TechCrunch.com | Read full press release at Google.com
You know those boxes with funky looking letters that are becoming increasingly common on website registration forms, or on Facebook Pages when you want to post an update? They’re called captchas and they’re used primarily to deter spammers and bots.
owns them. The search giant just announced on their blog that they’re buying reCAPTCHA, which is used on more than 100,000 websites worldwide.
