In a sadly predictable turn of events Google has binned Jaiku, a service they bought just over a year ago for a huge chunk of change ($12 million). Dodgeball too, has eventually suffered the cruel fate that has been looming over it ever since Google bought them back in 2005. Apparently it’s part of a Google cost cutting and re-focusing exercise, but I can’t for the life of me understand why they went ahead and bought duplicate services in the first place and then didn’t build out on those products.
I’m worried its becoming quite the modus operandi for Google to buy out small exciting startups, starve them of resources and then discard them when they fail to bring in any real revenue. Not cool, Google. In fact, it’s rather evil. In future this should surely make any startup think twice before flipping their passion to Google for a sum of cash.
Why do I care? Well, apparently I told you so.