Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) buys start-up Angstro on its march towards building a social network service unfazed by Facebook's launch of Places.
Los Angeles Times reported that the company's owner and entrepreneur Rohit Khare sold his company Angstro to Google for an undisclosed amount and has joined Google to support its foray into the social networking segment.
Khare revealed that he would be joining Google in a posting on his company website.
Angstro recently launched knx.to, a real-time search engine and API that allows one to search for real-time information about friends or business partners. The feature searches for the exact friend you are looking for after scanning various social sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr to verify the person actually searched for. The facility also allows one to see recent updates on the person's status, thus, allowing one to connect on the preferred platform.
Google recently invested in social gaming sites Zynga and Slide and also bought Jambool a virtual currency site, all in its efforts to ramp its efforts to build GoogleMe, its answer to Facebook.
Google also acquired virtual search engine Like.com to supplement its Goggles features. However, as Google has taken the acquisition road to build its social network empire instead of building a product of its own, the road ahead is that of integrating and synchronizing these acquisitions.
With its launch of Gmail and Google voice synchronized service, GoogleMe could sport a calling service in GoogleMe, thus, differentiating itself from Facebook-like real-time communication.
Facebook's launch of Places is touted as the next big ad revenue treasure but with Google adding voice calling features for free, future of communications or social networking is set to be revolutionized.
With cloud-computing facility, its search engine prowess and Android's reach, Google has the entire infrastructure in place to leverage on -- but the only element which could cost its social network foray is time -- as Facebook marches on sporting 500 million users which is difficult to reach in near future.
International Business Times, The Global Business News Leader
