Google to Acquire Postini

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

Hey! It could happen!

No lines, no waiting, free food and drinks, but the windows are replaced with screens showing advertisements 100% of the time.

Re:Coming soon: Google Airlines

And when you buy your ticket, you can click "I'm feeling lucky" and end up in the middle of nowhere. Awesome!

Additional commentary

There is some additional commentary [centernetworks.com] on the deal on Centernetworks.

OT but yikes

Mark me as OT, but damn. I really wish I could make a startup and sell it to google for $1million let alone the $500M+ these smaller companies seem to be getting.

In cash?

Google will acquire Postini for $625 million in cash

Mr. Postini: You have the briefcase, Page?

Brin pulls an uzi from under his jacket.

Page: Just sign the papers, Postini.

Hmm...

The institution I work has been using Postini for almost a year now. It works pretty well. But, I've also used DSPAM and Spamassassin, and Postini is definitely not $625M better than either of those two.

Google buys

Googling "google buys" provides a pretty rich and varied list of Google's acquisitions: YouTube, Grand Central, Feedburner, Measure Map... and on and on and on. There's even rumours in some parts that a tie up between Google and Apple might be on the cards. Sorry, but it's getting to the point where "Google buys" stories just aren't informative anymore.

Sometimes

I wonder if big companies awash with cash wouldn't be better off doing stuff themselves instead of paying ridiculous premiums. The other interesting thing is how profitable this company is and if google would've earned more buying 625 million $ of government bonds than whatever they'll make during the next few years of this.

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(?) million for their search box and other stuff to go on myspace, that was truly mind-boggling.

It's like they feel the need to spend cash if it makes sense or not sometimes.

Oh, well...

"The acquisition is slated to enhance Google's application portfolio,"

... hope they do not become another Jotspot and vanish into thin air.

Good News

We've been using Postini for the past few years, and have had great results with it. I just hope the Google interface design team does some work with Postini. Not that the Postini interface is horrible, but it could use more of the polish that Google brings to their apps.

Google to acquire Jet Ski maker

It is hoped that the speed of the jet ski will help it jump the shark really well.

Damn Microsoft

Always buying companies instead of innovating.

We use Postini and it is GOOD.

We use Postini here and it's really really good. It reliably filters out nearly all the spam that arrives, and it's fairly inexpensive ($1 per mailbox per month). Scaling it to the size of Google will make it even better. I'm looking forward to it.

Cash?

Cash - so a suitcase of dollar/euro/pound notes then?

Scale comparison

Postini was bought for an amount roughly 83 times the price AMD paid of Transmeta. That just completely screws with my perceptions of scale regarding the value of companies. And I thought I had a pretty good idea of the number system we use.

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!

Google OS

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 from Google, with Google making money from advertising within it's OS.

Clueless email admins untie!

This will be greeted with cheers by countless Exchange-Server-In-A-Box admins, who can't configure any sort of spam or content filtering on their side, or by those too frightened by Unix to implement their own relays. "If it has Google goodness, it must be ok - lets just use Postini! (while I make myself less and less relevant)".

Sorry, bitter today, mopped up after too many bad mail admins.

PS Find the joke and win the prize!

Email Down

Oh the irony! My company's email service is hosted by Postini and is down this morning.

I had my previous firm using Postini

I started off with Spamassassin+CLAMAV and something else and some Exchange server-based rules but the upkeep was time-intensive and the spam were still coming down our wire.

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

A blog [blogspot.com] entry over at the BackChanne breaks down just how many customers Postini had in the enterprise market, the only surprise for me was that Microsoft chose to take-out Frontbridge and not Postini. Whats next? Yahoo buys Messagelabs for 300M? Half the market share of Postini.
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

Now Postini will get access to the Googlebrain!

First of all, as many have noted, the point of this is not to adapt Postini tools to Gmail. That may happen eventually, but it's not the point. The point is that Postini offers enterprise services that Google never did, and already has a prominent userbase. And if you ask why enterprises don't just switch to Gmail and get the same spam-filtering for free, you don't understand how enterprises work.

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.

in other ways...

Maybe to learn on how to better deploy SPAM ("cough": Ads) features from a ANTIspam company?

Considering they are hitting the plateau for hiring extreme/smart developers (nope, I guess I didn't "cut it" after interview #3), and learning more about ads/spam and spam filtering, this is a good buy to compliment the double click purchase.

But for 625M!? Makes me think not...

Credit

Google keeps making these multi million dollar purchases. I hope they're using a credit card to earn miles.

This just in...

A revolt is sweeping the intergoogle as googledotters dismay at googlesofts purchase of diggoogle.

I am also for sale...

... for the same amount

Re:what does Google want with a male stripper?

You've got that wrong. They're acquiring a truly nasty coffee substitute made from burned wheat flour and molasses. Obviously, they're afraid of their geeks getting coffee nerves [lileks.com].

Re:Name change for Postini

Googlini

Yeah, it has a better sound to it than some of the alternatives. Anybody wanna Poogle?

Re:In cash!?

Does "in cash" really mean what I think it means? (Posting as AC, as I am too embarassed to admit I don't get this language as much as I thought I did)

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).

Re:In cash!?

It doesn't mean cash as in coins or notes; a cheque or bank transfer is very easily converted to cash in comparison to paying with shares. Google bought YouTube for $1.65bn in shares for example.

Re:Italian or gay?

At first, I was thinking it was some type of pasta.

Re:Name change for Postini

Sounds like a pokemon :/

Re:Doesn't make any sense

Sir, just mind your own business please. Carry on.