Google Inside

Parlano and Microsoft have come to terms which are undisclosed, to be acquired by this corporate giant. Their 50-odd employees are planning on moving to Redmond, WA after the close of the deal expected to happen in the fourth quarter.

“…Parlano’s “collaborative” software enables thousands of workers to share messages and other documents in real time, and offers better security than the freebie instant messaging offered by some Internet service providers…” is what ChicagoBusiness.com had to say about the deal. This actually doesn’t come as a surprise to me, not in the least bit.

Microsoft is beginning to realize that they need to act quickly on the rapidly moving industry of the “office” world. More and more businesses are moving online and therefor this is where Microsoft needs to be. Google is the only serious competitor out there right now for the web office market, but Google doesn’t have the “office” brand name that Microsoft has. Google doesn’t have their own operating system nor their own widely-used office platform.

Microsoft does indeed have an advantage here. Google has gTalk which is already been widely adopted throughout the world, but it is still very limited.

I believe Microsoft acquired Parlano as part of their efforts to begin moving into the web world for Office. I predict that we will see quite a few more acquisitions by Microsoft in the web office suite arena. They have a strong brand name, so they do have that much going for them, but they really need to pick up the pace and get some released in the next year or two if they want to stay in the game.

Related Google Acquisitions

• Postini: Enterprise Communication and Security Compliance
• GrandCentral: VoIP
• Trendalyzer: generates moving graphics and other novel effects in the display of facts, figures, and statistics in presentations.
• JotSpot: Integration across platforms to share and use documents, galleries, spreadsheets, and more.

We can clearly see through all these acquisitions that the competition is ramping up.