Google to Acquire Postini 147
Dynamoo writes "Google has announced that it is to acquire Postini, company best known for its corporate spam filtering and security service, but also active in Instant Messaging and compliance area.
The deal is to purchase Postini for $625m in cash. The acquisition is slated to enhance Google's application portfolio, and Google will also acquire several very large Blue Chip customers that have previously eluded it."
Coming soon: Google Airlines (Score:4, Funny)
No lines, no waiting, free food and drinks, but the windows are replaced with screens showing advertisements 100% of the time.
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Re: Google Enhanced Reality, Sinicized. (Score:2)
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Example: the copy machine is jammed. The goggles give you a kind of x-ray vision showing exactly where the jam is, and a line drawing superimposed on the copier animates the next step in removing the jam.
Example: Take the cell phone company idea of location based services, but instead of sticking it on the phone, overlay the information on the user's perception.
If you imagine a generalized service of this sort, Google is bett
Microsoft better positioned for enhanced reality? (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft better positioned for enhanced realit (Score:2)
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By the way, I think this is called augmented reality [wikipedia.org] .
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Actually, I enjoyed Snow Crash. I found Stephenson through Cryptonomicon, read the Baroque Cycle, and then went on to his smaller books because I enjoyed his writing so much.
Anyway, it wasn't Snow Crash I was thinking of, but I guess that's apt. As much as I enjoyed Stephenson, I was a trekkie for far longer, and the Borg are a much better-known analog.
Damn. I fed the tr
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With the introduction of RyanAir [ryanair.com] and EasyJet [easyjet.com] in Europe, air travel has taken off, forcing the standard companies such as British Airways to drop their prices and offer more affordable travel. A passenger on there one said to me, "I travel home to Rome once a month because it's cheaper than driving there."
My point being, nothing here in North America comes close; we are desperately in need of a discount airline that provides affordable travel. Google could leverage this need
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Baggage fees, for example - at 5 pounds/kg over weight for checked luggage, if you're traveling for more than a couple days, you're going to be hosed on that one.
More importantly, perhaps, Ryan Air saves costs at all levels. I was recently in Bristol International for a Ryan Air flight to Shannon. It was cheap - ~70 euro for myself and my wife (not counting the overweight baggage fees). We were scheduled to leave at 1805, and we even boarded a little
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Although if it really were 5 pounds (force) per 1 kg (mass), I imagine the US would adopt metric much faster than we are. I mean, a woman could say her weight was 30 instead of 150. That'd have to be a hit.
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Re:Coming soon: Google Airlines (Score:4, Funny)
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Additional commentary (Score:1)
OT but yikes (Score:2)
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I think there is also the perception of Google buying companies to add to their portfolio, not necessarily ones that generate a good profit. I think there might be some hope that you could come up with an interesting idea, not necessarily a very profitable one, and Google would buy you out for the cool factor alone.
Postini's been around a while (Score:3, Informative)
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In cash? (Score:2, Funny)
Mr. Postini: You have the briefcase, Page?
Brin pulls an uzi from under his jacket.
Page: Just sign the papers, Postini.
Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'm guessing you're the one who's right. Results talk. The local ISP I use has been pretty sharp and customer-responsive. They just completed their move AWAY from Postini (I could almost say the other "day" for amusing timing) after several years to a product they believe will be more flexible and respons
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As a spam-filtering go-between, Google gets right back to their earlier push to get corporate users using for-pay gmail. But now it's a value-added service and doesn't require that you give up exchange (initially).
When the rest of the google apps catch up, it'll be that much easier to pitch a cut-over.
I'd imagine the next step would be more application-glue to integrate exchange calendars and p
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Postini is a fully managed service. DSPAM and Spamassassin is not.
I have used Spamassassin and Postini (not DSPAM) Postini is a cakewalk, Spamassassin while good, is not. Postini offers many things that DSPAN and Spamassassin does not. Like email spooling among other things. I think the best part of Postini is that I don't have to manage the hardware and software. I create Postini accounts and thats about it.
Also, I do not allow any connections originating from th
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Re:Hmmm... (Score:1)
Imagine you're wanting to make a service offering to host corporate America's email, which includes all of the private juicy tidbits of data that are in it as well. It makes a lot more sense, from the corporate entity's standpoint to have that interaction be with one outsourced company, not two like it is today (READ: Gmail for your domain currently uses Postini for anti-SPAM). Add onto that the compliance
Google buys (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just you wait until they launch their gBuy service...
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I read this, and IM'ed one of my friends who works for Postini, and they found out about the deal from me.
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If your answer is the first one, you either haven't worked yet, or need to go find a better job, fast.
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You are correct in general, but wrong about this particular case.
Google Apps is Google's attempt to make money from Corporate America, selling software-as-a-service. Were this ever to work, it might be a very lucrative venture, and finally wean Google off of their single money-making business (ads). It would also mean that Google is competing directly with Microsoft in Microsoft's home turf. So, the reason
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Sometimes (Score:2, Interesting)
But this isn't always the case, I remember reading "you idiots" comments after news ltd bought myspace for 300(?) million and then reading a few months later how google was paying 800
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Oh, well... (Score:2)
"The acquisition is slated to enhance Google's application portfolio,"
... hope they do not become another Jotspot and vanish into thin air.
Good News (Score:4, Interesting)
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I wasn't aware that Google outsourced their interface design to Poland...
Google to acquire Jet Ski maker (Score:2)
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Damn Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Oops (Score:3, Insightful)
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We use Postini and it is GOOD. (Score:3, Informative)
Cash? (Score:2)
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"Any sufficiently advanced sarcasm is indistinguishable from offtopic" (or ignorance in this case)
Hopefully I'm not giving too much credit to the grandparent.
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Scale comparison (Score:2)
Maybe these companies should just start publishing these numbers in milliards and crores and I would still grasp the value of the transaction about as well...
Cheers!
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Cheers!
Google OS (Score:1)
It's most likely another step towards Google creating their own OS, where all machines are thin-clients and applications are run from a server such as the way Google Apps are at the moment.
From the article:
Like Google Apps, Postini's services are entirely hosted, eliminating the need to install any hardware or software.
Personally I wouldn't go for it, but it makes sound economic sense to a lot of companies. Thin clients are alot cheaper than standard PC's and instead of paying thousands of euro to microsoft for licensing, they can pay a small subscription to Google instead. Maybe they will receive the service free fr
Clueless email admins untie! (Score:1)
Sorry, bitter today, mopped up after too many bad mail admins.
PS Find the joke and win the prize!
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Email Down (Score:2)
I had my previous firm using Postini (Score:3, Informative)
Then I got Postini and the world changed. Upkeep was mindless, the product was really cheap per mailbox and a huge portion of the spam was stopped at Postini's servers hugely reducing the load on our Spamwall and Exchange servers. In addition, it also gave us mail spooling for when we had to take the Exchange server down or if our Internet connection went out. Nothing was ever lost.
This is another case of Google finding an excellent product that fits in with their business direction and will enhance their products, not just a Microsoft-type acquisition intended to stifle competition.
Market Share: Postini Dominant in Fortune 1000 (Score:1)
For those of you with click fatigue, the market rankings look like this:
Postini 49%
Messagelabs 22%
Frontbridge 21%
MXlogic 5%
Blackspider 0.4%
Nick
Postine has a MUCH better filtering approach (Score:2)
That's also why the average time between receipt of mail by Postini and your incoming server receiving the header is in the region of 400ms or so, as opposed to, say Messagelabs which is (if I recall correctly) somewhere between 2 and 4 minutes.
Postini is also the only one who also has a Swiss hosted setup, and it's thus the only one who can filter for Swiss b
Now Postini will get access to the Googlebrain! (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't doubt that some of the spam filtering procedure developed by Postini will eventually help filter Gmail. Indeed, it wouldn't make sense in the long run for Google to keep two separate spam filtering platforms. But here's the point: the primary beneficiary of the buyout will be the Postini spam filter itself, the thing that will be sold for subscription fees to enterprises. That product will improve for one simple reason: Access to the incredible amount of data that Google has access to. We all help Google when we're kind enough to press the "mark as spam" button in Gmail. And I'm sure they remember, and our entry sharpens up whatever Bayesian algorithm Google uses to detect future spam. When Google's data merges with Postini's data, it will be very hard for other enterprise spam filtering providers to offer a product of similar effectiveness. To do so, they would need to store their own databases on a scale large enough to compete with Google - which isn't cheap. It is cheap for Google to supply Postini filters with raw data, since Google collect that data anyway. So Postini the pay service gets an incredible competitive advantage though it's intergration with the Googlebrain. That's not to mention the extra mindshare that the Google brand brings with it.
For those of us who wondered how Google plans to profit from all this investment in a free email service, this is a part of the answer: There will be a for-pay enterprise version based on the same investment. The same goes for Search, btw. So pay attention: this is Google trying to become something more than an ad pusher. And it's not a dumb idea: the marginal cost for Google to develop a good for-pay spam filtering system is small compared to the money they could sell it for.
And since you can already buy Google computers to search your enterprise for internal data, and those Google computers are heavily based on work Google developed for other goals (and for free access), we might ask the following question: What other things is Google good at, and would enterprises be interested in paying for products based on those skills? Google maps? For sure! But consider Google News, the human-free, smart organizer of articles by subject, relevance and prominence. Are there companies with a lot of data that could benefit from the sort of organization alorithms that run Google News? Damn right! Each year more enterprises are finding that the cheapness of data storage left them with attics of archival data that's a complete mess. I think we're starting to understand the "???" that separated Google's free services and Profit.
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So Google takes one more step along the road from "Do No Harm" to "1984 Big Brother"
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Yeah, it has a better sound to it than some of the alternatives. Anybody wanna Poogle?
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Cheers!
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Maybe when I'm done with my Wii.
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No, it doesn't mean that they'll show up with a suitcase (or truck) full of bills. It simply means that the purchase will happen with currency of some sort (likely bank transfers and such), rather than paying for it with Google stock (the value of which fluctuates--well, it fluctuates moreso than hard currency).
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