Google Plays Hardball Acquiring Dodgeball.com
On a day which could have easily been overshadowed by the launch of Yahoo Music Unlimited, Google snuck in under the radar with the reported acquisition of none other than Dodgeball.com. Dodgeball.com is not the official site of the Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn comedy, infact Dodgeball is a rather large mobile social-networking powerhouse. Let the games begin!
Gary Price of Search Engine Watch reports that “dodgeball.com is currently available in 22 U.S. cities and allows you to find other dodgeball.com users via text messaging. In other words meet-up with friends, make new friends, etc. by actually meeting up in person.” Not a bad way to hook up for a fun night out, or meet some people in the same area with similar interests.
For those wondering what Dodgeball is and how the Google acquisition will effect the company, here’s a nice little write up on the Dodgeball.com site. “On May 11th dodgeball.com was acquired by Google! I’m sure a lot of you have some questions about what this means for you and the future of dodgeball, so we put together a quick Q&A.”
Q: Why did dodgeball sell to Google?
A: As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken dodgeball about a far as we can alone. Since we finished grad school, we’ve been trying to figure out how to grow dodgeball and make it a better service along the way. We talked to a lot of different angel investors and venture capitalists, but no one really “got” what we were doing – that is until we met Google.The people at Google think like us. They looked at us in a “You’re two guys doing some pretty cool stuff, why not let us help you out and let’s see what you can do with it” type of way. We liked that. Plus, Alex and I are both Google superfans and the people we’ve met so far are smart, cool and excited about what they’re working on.
Q: What does the acquisition mean to dodgeball? What’s going to change?
A: Now that we’re part of Google, we’ll have more resources available to us. That means Alex and I can get back to building new features. We have a lot of ideas that we’ve wanted to work on for a long time and we’re excited that we will now have the time and resources to actually follow-through with them. There’s some cool stuff in the works – stay tuned.
More Q & A from Dodgeball.com on the Google Acquisition.
