Just a few weeks after buying Motorola Mobility Holdings for a whopping $12.5 billion, search engine giant Google Inc has acquired consumer internet company Meebo for about $100m with a aim to expand its social networking service Google Plus.
The new move by Google is expected to boost Google Plus by providing more tools, as Meebo has about 100 million members in the U.S.
"We are always looking for better ways to help users share content and connect with others across the Web, just as they do in real life," Google said in a statement. "With the Meebo team's expertise in social publisher tools, we believe they will be a great fit with the Google Plus team," it added.
"Together with Google, we're super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike," Meebo wrote in its blog post.
Google Plus has more than 170 million users since its launch about a year ago but it's still far behind Facebook, which has more than 900 million users. Acquisition of Meebo may not enable Google Plus to give Facebook a run for its money but it will surely help in many ways.
It may be recalled that Google has acquired 140 companies since 2009, which cost them a whopping $16 billion.
Google acquired Motorola Mobility Holdings for $12.5 billion in May this year. The deal was struck after the companies won the approval of the Chinese government for the acquisition. Google said that the company has agreed to keep its Android software open and free for at least five years in order to get the approval. It also has agreed to charge reasonable fees for technology licenses.
Larry Page, CEO of Google, announced on the search engine's official blog that the deal with Motorola Mobility had been closed. He also expressed his happiness on the deal, saying that phones have changed people's lives.
"It's why I'm excited to announce today that our Motorola Mobility deal has closed. Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone. We all remember Motorola's StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google," wrote Page.
