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Google buys Meebo
- capo 14y ago"... has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google!". Does that mean that they are expecting some sort of regulatory review before it's a done deal or is it just standard speak?
- tomkarlo 14y agoStandard language. Mergers usually can't be completed until after certain regulatory reviews are complete. In the US, one of the most common (for larger deals) is HSR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Scott-Rodino_Antitrust_Improvements_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Scott-Rodino_Antitrust_Imp...
- michaelbuckbee 14y agoTo me this makes sense as Meebo has really transformed themselves from a "chat" company to an "advertising toolbar" company. They (for better or worse) absolutely dominate the annoying popup toolbar at the bottom of a website market. Ex: http://www.slate.com http://www.slate.com
- joelhaasnoot 14y agoThere was a couple of steps in between I think - didn't they also do some sort of news/feed syndication or "following"? Till Gmail and Google Talk became popular, Meebo was my MSN replacement of choice.
- citricsquid 14y agoStill exists: https://www.meebo.com/messenger https://www.meebo.com/messenger Full timeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo#Timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo#Timeline
- jholman 14y agoWhat the heck is wrong with ICQ as an "MSN replacement"? If the new thing (MSN) sucks, and the old thing (ICQ) still works, why go to a NEWER thing? Now, I have no trouble understanding why you'd eventually go to gChat; it's clearly superior.
- joelhaasnoot 14y agoI meant "MSN client replacement" - not having to install software and having chat logs everywhere was an advantage at the time.
- duaneb 14y agoI have never seen that before - maybe my brain just tunes it out.
- JulianMorrison 14y agoAdblock meebocdn.com and they go away.
- joejohnson 14y agoI'm not sure if I'm adding meebocdn.com to my blacklist correctly. But I was able to block Slate's toolbar through the AdBlock interface...
- bballdeo 14y agoI believe using the ghostery extension automatically blocks it as well. edit for links: link for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mlomiejdfkolichcflejclcbmpeaniij https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mlomiejdfkolichcfl...? link for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/
- Tomis02 14y agoYou forgot the link for Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en-gb/extensions/details/ghostery/ https://addons.opera.com/en-gb/extensions/details/ghostery/
- ticks 14y agoThat toolbar has improved a lot since I last saw it, it used to make the websites all jerky and difficult to browse.
- AznHisoka 14y agoThat toolbar is godawful, and I have no idea how they managed to sign up so many companies to display it. I mean.. it's not like they had access to all these advertisers since they were primarily a chat company. It's something that can be duplicated by any one of us. What gives?
- rhizome 14y agoThat is a story I've been waiting to read for some time now. AFAIK, it doesn't exist yet.
- bpm140 14y agoMost of their initial toolbar customers came from the Time Warner strategic investment. Publishers are so hungry for revenue, they tend to flock to guaranteed revenue, which Meebo was likely using to get additional sites on board. I'm guessing that we'll see the end of those toolbars within six months, as Google will have no interest in selling that ad format. They're already rumored to be laying off all te salespeople.
- jpark 14y agoIt's the result of an incredible bd and ad sales team. If you look at the senior team, esp in sales, it's a lot of very senior CNET veterans who took along most of their experience and contacts from CNET to Meebo. This is not something duplicated easily.
- veemjeem 14y agoYes, but it probably didn't need most of the original functionality of meebo either. It was essentially a chat bar for webpages...
- danudey 14y agoI grabbed the Meebo chat app for iOS the day it came out, and it was a great, free alternative to existing options like IM+ and Beejive. It had a few minor bugs though, like tapping 'send' was actually tapping Return, so if your cursor was in the middle of a line it would send a message which was broken in half where your cursor was. They fixed it after a few months, but you could very obviously see that what was happening was it was inserting the newline, and then they were removing it, and then the message was getting sent. It was an obvious hack and it made me feel like they really didn't understand how to make a good iOS app, and didn't care enough to do it properly. Meanwhile, they started adding other 'features'. They added the ability to 'check in' to a website, like foursquare for web pages. Except it only worked inside of the built-in browser in Meebo, which meant it only worked for links that your friends sent you via IM while you were on your phone. How much time did they spend implementing a feature that I can't imagine anyone ever using instead of adding actual functionality to their app (or fixing the constant crashes I got all the time)? That was the point where I basically wrote Meebo off. Sure, they probably couldn't make money providing a free chat service, but they could have branched out in other areas, rather than the idiotic-seeming stuff they've been working on lately.
- MaysonL 14y agoVery strange: the bar only shows up for me in Chrome, no trace of it in Safari (whether or not AdBlocker is enabled, whether or not I'm logged into Slate). Ahh! Long enough ago that I totally forgot about it, I installed the Block Meebpo Toolbar userscript in NinjaKit
- adrianwaj 14y agoDoes the toolbar even allow chatting with site staff like Olark? (seemingly no) whilst a useful thing to do right now: Olark is also expensive.
- gfosco 14y agoInteresting... does Meebo have any patents? I really would've expected that Google could re-develop any Meebo technology for cheaper than an acquisition.
- grhino 14y agoI'm guessing the relationship Meebo has built with its customer base is more important than the technology.
- lbbb 14y agoI've been using the (old) Meebo Messenger for years. I've never had the impression that they cared about its users a lot. There were no updates on the user interface since I began using it, they didn't add features that were highly requested on the feedback forums. The toolbar thing is just... I don't know what that is. Looks useless to me. Another thing, are there any good other web based multi messengers? I guess they will shut this down soon then?
- mibbitier 14y agoI'm pretty sure they gave up on the messenger, and decided to put all their effort into the toolbar.
- franze 14y agoI don't think that (even) more developers for G+ will solve ... anything.
- speg 14y agoNo, but more users might.
- franze 14y agobuying a user base + migrating them to another platform is a very slippery slope (privacy and PR wise). think it's mostly about developers.
- creativityland 14y agoNothing G+ won't try at this point ;)
- drivebyacct2 14y agoOh look, the tired "G+ sucks/is desperate" meme.
- duaneb 14y agoG+ is still pretty damn young. I'm sceptical they can upset facebook, but it's not as if it's a ghostland.
- Karunamon 14y agoThe "G+ is dead/dying" canard again? Really?
- ericd 14y agoHonest question - is it not?
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
- KenCochrane 14y agoLooks like the site is getting crushed, I can't load the page.
- markus2012 14y agoThere's probably whiskey involved.
- pbreit 14y agoWow, I thought Meebo was on track for much more than a $100 million buyout. It has raised $70 million and apparently has a very large, active user base after all. I wonder what happened?
- LiroXIV 14y agoAm I the only one who hopes they kill off that stupid Meebo web page taskbar thing? I find it one of the things killing the web in my opinion)
- dm8 14y agoI loved Meebo back in 2005 but they became annoying as hell with their toolbar. I always felt that product was more of a "solution in search of a problem". Anyways, I'm happy for Meebo team. I'm following them for a while and they seem to be really good guys. Especially, their founding team.
- zinssmeister 14y agoWhy?
- rokhayakebe 14y agoMeebo definitely went through its nine lives. I wonder what Google was trying to acquire through this purchase.
- heretohelp 14y agoNot too sure. I used to contract for Meebo (I did so for about six months) and I'm kinda puzzled as to what they were looking for.
- starpilot 14y agoThe talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads who demonstrated their talent in developing a product and a launching company. It'd be a safe way to hire a few competent engineers, and I doubt the acquisition price contains much goodwill.
- Spooky23 14y agoI doubt the talent behind meebo is worth $200M. I'd say that it's more a bailout of the investors.
- webwright 14y agoThe price is rumored to be $100M. Google and others regularly pay $2-3M per engineer... More for kickass devs/leaders. And certainly they'd probably pay a premium for larger dev teams. In other words, they'd rather buy 1 company with 25 engineers for $100M than lots of tiny companies (due to the corp dev overhead of buying a company).
- jpeterson 14y agoThe talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads... Can we please get over this dopey fixation on big-name elite schools?
- Karunamon 14y agoElite schools tend to have elite people. Funny how that works.
- SpikeDad 14y agoNot good news. I do hope Google leaves the Meebo name intact so it's easy to block their garbage with Adblock. I assume shortly we'll be seeing new postings from Google on what new personal information they'll be adding to the Google brain from Meebo.
- kul 14y agoThere was a lot of Meebo coverage on TC over the years: http://techcrunch.com/tag/meebo/page/5/ http://techcrunch.com/tag/meebo/page/5/ Early rounds were rumoured to be done at $200m valuations so with liquidation preferences I'm not sure how much this really leaves on the table after the investors are paid.
- RossDM 14y agoThis makes me sad for the future of their chat client. The toolbar may suck, but their IOS client rocks. It synchronizes with their web chat interface, so that you may switch between conversations on mobile/desktop.
- jry 14y agoOne thing no outlet has reported is that everyone except business development and select engineers were laid off as a result of the deal. This all comes from someone who left Meebo recently and is still close with people that work there. Not sure exactly how many, but it sounds like it was a good number. Note: I said it was the majority, that's what my friend made it sound like, but I'm not sure.. will update once I find out
- debacle 14y agoMeebo laid off most of its staff as part of this deal?
- jry 14y agoMost might be too strong, but it seems pretty bad. The chicago office is gone as a result of the acquisition I'm told. Reports are starting to roll in about other locations http://betabeat.com/2012/06/meebos-engineers-headed-to-google-non-technical-staff-unlikely-to-follow/ http://betabeat.com/2012/06/meebos-engineers-headed-to-googl...
- durin42 14y agoDid they have any engineering folks outside the bay area?
- jamesflorentino 14y agoI honestly did not see that coming. I was a regular user of meebo way back in 2006-2008 but I don't have a solid recollection as to why I left (now using imo.im). I can only assume that the acquisition has something to do with Google Plus. Well, whatever it is for, I wish them good luck.
- dirtyhand 14y agoGoogle is scared of Pinterest.
- huhtenberg 14y ago> Thank you all for coming along for the ride! Reads like a farewell note to me, not very encouraging.
- jpkeisala 14y agoFor a moment I was thinking they bought Meego.
- ALee 14y agoI met the Meebo team at SXSW in 2008 and, being the uppity entrepreneur, I asked if I could stay in touch with them... Even though they were super busy, Seth would take a call over the phone when my startup was about to get acquired or when we were trying as hard as we could to raise money in late 2008. When I was playing a game of Underground Assassins in 2011, nobody knew my name. So they went by my t-shirt's logo - Meebo. Honestly, six years after they began, people still remembered their logo. I still find it amazing how Meebo for a period of time inhabited the social consciousness. Like art, I'm glad to have experienced it, and being in the bay area, felt a little closer to it.
- mkopinsky 14y agoOff topic, but what is underground assassins? Google is not helping.
- intended 14y agoI'm guessing - and I could be wrong - but based on the fact that its a real world thing - its likely the game where you get a bunch of people to play at hunting/assassinating each other as they go about their daily life. The objective is to tag enemy players and become the last player standing.
- mkopinsky 14y agoI've played assassins before, which I think is what you're describing. I'm wondering if Underground Assassins is a variation on the game, or just a different name.
- ALee 14y agoSorry, typed in haste. Undercover Assassins, see this: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/12/DDS21KK3PB.DTL http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/12/...
- kevinsd 14y agoI have no doubt that startups including meebo got talents. But how does google maintain its bar of engineer qualification? Or does it?
- 1123581321 14y agoI was expecting this or a shut-down announcement soon. Meebo has never been able to provide something valuable to enough people to become a going concern.
- mibbitier 14y agoI don't think that's true. They had a lot of people using their messenger client. More to do with mistakes and execution. Why did they take $70m in funding? That's a ridiculous amount of investment to take. Why couldn't they monetize that amount of eyeballs?
- 1123581321 14y agoI know they had a lot of users, but I don't see how they were making money off the client and they had a lot of employees. Maybe the spam thing was working for them but I don't think they would have folded if so.
- mibbitier 14y agoSure. They had way too much investment, way too many employees, and didn't seem to have much of a handle on making money by the looks of things. It'll be spun as a success "Acquired by Google yay!", but seems a pretty resounding failure to me.
- danudey 14y agoOr go beyond monetizing eyeballs. Turn it into a live chat service, so visitors to your website can instantly communicate with you. Or do what Chatterous did and let people create custom IM group chats. Maybe they did these things and I didn't notice, but anything seems better than 'Let's put a toolbar at the bottom of other peoples' sites!'
- shurane 14y agoThey went after the low hanging fruit, I imagine.
- soulclap 14y agoMeebo was useful, back then. Sometimes. But right now I am tempted to just respond with 'A/S/L?'.
- taylorbuley 14y agoI liked how they phrased the news in the body of the post -- "Meebo has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google" -- more than how they phrased it in the headline: "Google is acquiring Meebo." I'd like to think that if I was selling a startup I would be master of my own destiny, too.
- rorschachh 14y agogoogle is smart enough to realize that buying user bases doesnt work so it must be the meebo metrics and their client install base? over the last few years it seems like meebo has been struggling to make chat more of a commodity than it actually is, IMO and at this price its more like a push for investors. as for g+ - desperate times call for desperate measures.
- sakopov 14y agoNice, generic and overenthusiastic post-acquisition blog post. They'll likely be shutdown within a few months.
- emehrkay 14y agoI like meebo, I always have and still use it (for AIM). I consider myself a fan even though I used to hate: "They got 15 million for online instant messaging?" I really liked how in the early days they would show off their growth, new office/employees, etc. when you logged in. It subconsciously acted as a source of inspiration.
- ricardobeat 14y agoI hope Meebo Messenger doesn't die. It's still the best web-based chat app, and the only way I still connect to my old MSN account.
- evanwolf 14y agoThis is exactly the kind of talent and infrastructure you want for building WebRTC clients for Adsense. Think enhanced, in-browser, click-to-call ads. With video chat. Talk to other shoppers and customers, then talk directly with the restaurant or plumber. Or they could join the Google+ team as G brings videoconferencing in-house.
- jorgeortiz85 14y agoMy first full-time job offer as I was wrapping up college in 2007 was from Meebo. At the time, they were about 12 employees. I didn't realize it at the time, as it was my first time going through the interview/offer dance, but having much more experience with these things now (from both sides of the process), I can honestly say it ranks as the best I've ever heard of. a) The technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been through. It culminated in them asking me to set aside 4 hours to come into their office and work alongside them (asking questions if I needed to), writing an HTTP server in C. I almost shat my pants when I heard the question, but to this day its the most rewarding technical interview of my life. I started off with a problem I wasn't sure I could sove in the allotted time, I _built_ something, and it _worked_. (Well, it mostly worked. There was one elusive bug I couldn't figure out that day. I had to leave because of another commitment, but I promised to come back the next day and fix it. When I got back the next day, a senior Meebo engineer had spent 3 hours debugging my code until he figured out the problem. We code reviewed my code line-by-line as a wrap-up to the interview.) b) The non-technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been through. They were very concerned about the ever-elusive "culture fit", and the entire team made an effort to get to know me, taking me out to meals, etc. I met all three of the co-founders (Seth, Elaine, and Sandy), all of whom I'm sure were busy trying to build a product and grow a company, but they were incredibly warm, genuinely interested in getting to know me, and generous with their time. c) They gave me a great offer. For a fresh-out-of-college student with not much real work experience, both the salary and the equity portions of my offer were extremely generous. I didn't even have to negotiate. At the time, Seth explained they didn't want to go through a contentious negotiation process, so they were opening off with a generous offer and it wasn't really open to negotiation. It was, indeed, a generous offer. (Five years of experience later, and I'm making less money, adjusted for inflation, than Meebo offered me as a fresh-out-of-school untried new hire.) d) The post-offer process was the best I've been through. At the time, I knew nothing about startups, stock options, VC, etc. I didn't even know how much I didn't know. At his own initiative, Seth (the CEO!), took the time to explain the equity portion of my offer. The offer included a number of options and a strike price (standard), but unprompted told me about the other numbers I should be concerned with: total shares outstanding, fully diluted % stake, preference multiples, etc. There's much more transparency about this stuff today (blogs, etc), but at the time no one else explained this stuff to you (and as a stupid college student, you wouldn't know to ask). Even today, in a much more competitive hiring environment, I hear about companies that tell experienced engineers (who know what they're negotiating) that certain numbers which are essential to understanding an equity offer (like total number of shares outstanding) are "confidential". I ended up turning down the offer, but I have enormous admiration and respect for Seth, Sandy, Elaine, and the whole team at Meebo. Congratulations on your many successes over the years, and I hope to continue seeing great things from you in the future.
- shasty 14y agoGoogle should definitely buy ICQ next.
- shasty 14y agoIf they are like a company I used to work for Meebo probably has a patent that reads as follows: System and message for sending a message using a computer system