Google Buys Video Conferencing Software

Google has bought the conferencing software developed by Marratech, giving it a powerful desktop-based collaboration tool with video, text, VoIP and whiteboard features. Google’s blog post indicates they will be using the software internally, for employee communications, but it is certainly reasonable that Google may eventually fold it into a more powerful version of Google Talk, or use technology in Gmail or the Google Apps suite.

Wouldn’t it be funny if Google just bought a copy of some software at Staples, and issued a blog post that read like they had bought the company? I mean, the Marratech press release/blog post almost read like they did exactly that. I can picture it now…
Collaborating with Microsoft
Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 8:10:00 PM
Posted by Douglas Merrill, VP Engineering

As a company, we thrive on fun interactions and spontaneous video gaming. So we’re excited about acquiring Microsoft’s video gaming console, the Xbox 360, which will enable from-the-couch gaming for Googlers in videogaming meetings wherever there’s a TV.

We look forward to learning from the extraordinary ingenuity of Microsoft’s engineers as they focus on video gaming research and development in Seattle, where they will continue to be located.

Update: To clarify some confusion, we bought an Xbox at Best Buy, not the company itself.