Google to acquire Yelp?

TechCrunch is reporting that Google is in advanced negotiations to acquire Yelp. Few months ago, Google started it's own service called Place Pages which provides information about restaurants, neighborhoods, points of interests etc. Place Pages is intended to provide same functionality as Yelp. If the deal goes through, we can expect Yelp to compliment Google's Place pages service or even replace it.

With the recent missed opportunity on lala, Google appears to be acting fast on yelp deal. Below is the list of acquisitions made by Google so far.

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2009-12-04	AppJet	Google Wave
2009-12-23	Teracent	Google AdSense
2009-09-09	Gizmo5	Google Voice
2009-09-09	AdMob	Mobile Advertisement
2009-09-16	reCAPTCHA	Security
2009-08-05	On2	YouTube

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2008-09-12	TNC	Textcube
2008-07-30	Omnisio	YouTube

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2007-10-09	Jaiku	Google Mobile
2007-09-27	Zingku	Google Mobile
2007-07-20	Image America	Google Maps (Aerial photography)
2007-07-09	Postini	Gmail
2007-07-02	GrandCentral	Google Voice
2007-06-19	Zenter	Google Documents
2007-06-05	PeakStream Inc	Server Computing
2007-06-01	FeedBurner	FeedBurner
2007-05-30	Panoramio	Panoramio
2007-05-11	Green Border	Google Chrome
2007-04-19	Marratech	Google talk
2007-04-17	Tonic Systems	Google Documents
2007-04-13	DoubleClick	Google AdSense
2007-03-16	Trendalyzer	Google Analytics
2007-03-16	Adscape Media	Google AdSense
2007-01-04	Xunlei	Google Sites

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2006-12-18	Endoxon	Google Maps
2006-11-13	YouTube	YouTube
2006-10-31	Jotspot Inc	Google Sites
2006-08-15	Neven Vision	Picasa
2006-04-09	Orion	Google Search
2006-03-14	@Last Software	Google Sketchup
2006-03-09	Upstartle (Writely)	Google Documents
2006-02-14	Measure Map	Google Analytics
2006-01-17	dMarc Broadcasting	Google AdSense

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2005-12-20	AOL (5% stake)	Search
2005-11	Skia	Android platform, Chrome browser
2005-11-17	Akwan Information Technologies	Internet Backbone (Latin America)
2005-09-15	Transformic Inc	Search
2005-08-17	Android	Android platform
2005-07	Reqwireless	Google Mobile
2005-07-07	Current Communications Group	Internet backbone
2005-05-12	Dodgeball	Google Latitude
2005-03-28	Urchin Software	Google Analytics
2005-01	2Web Technologies	Google Spreadsheets

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2004-10	Where2	Google Maps
2004-10-27	Keyhole	Google Maps, Google Earth
2004-09	ZipDash	Google Maps for Mobile
2004-07-13	Picasa	Picasa, Blogger
2004-06-23	Baidu	Baidu Search Engine
2004-05-10	Ignite Logic	Blogger

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2003-10	Sprinks	Google AdSense, AdWords
2003-10-07	Genius Labs	Blogger
2003-09-30	Kaltix Corp	iGoogle
2003-04	Applied Semantics	Google AdSense, AdWords
2003-04	Neotonic Software	Google Groups, Gmail
2003-02	Pyra Labs	Blogger

Date	Company	Resulting Service
2001-09-20	Outride	iGoogle
2001-02-12	Deja.com	Google Groups

Google showcases Chrome OS

Google showcased their Chromium Operating System (Chrome OS) today which is entirely web based. It is an open source application based on Linux and the Chrome web browser. Browser is the central place where you do all your work in Chrome OS - be it browsing, checking emails, editing documents, listening to music watching videos or playing games. All these features are available through App Menus, Panels in the browser. Since all applications are stored on the internet, the OS is not going to support standard hard drives, just SSDs. Even though it is free software, it is going to run only on compatible hardware. We need to see how it is going to fit in to the open source concept. Videos below -

Google Android Phones

After missing the opportunity to team up with Apple on iPhone more than 2 years ago, Verizon is betting big this time with the introduction of a slew of phones running on Google's Android platform.

Motorola's Droid (available on Nov 06) is the first touch-screen smartphone to use Google's Android version 2.0. Droid's features include sync to Exchange right out of the box so that you can check your work emails and download contacts and calendar. It also syncs your contacts with Facebook. Droid has a 5-megapixel camera with built in flash. Like other Android based phones, it can run multiple programs at once. The Google maps application in Droid can turn the smartphone into a GPS device providing turn-by-turn directions.

However, compared to iPhone, Droid's OS and look-and-feel is not refined. It does not support true multi-touch and it's application foot print is not as big as that of iPhone. Android's inability to use more than 256MB of apps is another drawback. But, better wireless coverage from Verizon and positive reviews by technology critics would make this smartphone a top shopping item for people looking for a mobile this holiday season.

According to Google, 18 mobile phones will be using Android platform by the end of 2009. Below is a partial list of phones available in North America:

Phone	Android Version
HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1)	1.0
HTC Magic (T-Mobile myTouch 3G)	1.5
HTC Hero (T-Mobile G2 Touch)	1.5
HTC Click	1.6
Samsung Galaxy	1.5
Samsung Moment	1.5
Motorola CLIQ	1.6
Motorola Heron	2.0
Motorola Droid	2.0
Sony Ericsson Xperia	1.6