More On Meebo: Price Is Around $100M, Product Team To Work On Google+ Publisher Tools, Layoffs Hit Sales
Meebo, the seven year-old chat service that morphed into a website toolbar and ad platform, is indeed selling to Google. The company confirmed the news a few minutes ago, and we've since dug up some more details.
Context & Ripple Effects
Meebo spent years seeking a path beyond chat: it added advertising with Meebo Rooms in 2007, then chose fundraising after an earlier sale effort did not reach its target price in 2008. A May report that Google was nearing a Meebo deal set up the confirmation.
The reported roughly $100 million sale turns Meebo from a standalone toolbar and ad-platform operator into a source of product talent for Google+. The split outcome is explicit: Meebo’s product team moves into publisher tools, while its sales organization absorbs layoffs.
First-order effects
- Google gains Meebo’s product team for Google+ Publisher Tools, redirecting the acquired company’s engineering capacity toward Google’s social-publishing effort.
- Meebo’s sales employees face immediate job cuts, while the company’s standalone commercial organization is reduced as the acquisition closes.
Second-order effects
- Google+ Publisher Tools gains a team with experience building publisher-facing web products, concentrating the acquisition’s value on product integration rather than Meebo’s existing sales operation.
- Meebo’s publisher and advertising relationships must contend with a changed owner and a smaller sales function, shifting account continuity from Meebo’s standalone business toward Google.
Third-order effects
- The deal illustrates an acqui-hire-style outcome in which a web company’s product team is retained for a buyer’s strategic platform while revenue-side roles are not carried over.
- The gap between Meebo’s earlier fundraising-era sale ambitions and the reported transaction price reinforces that platform-company exits are increasingly judged by strategic fit and team value, not only standalone valuation expectations.
The trend: Large platform companies are using acquisitions to add specialized product teams to strategic social and publishing platforms while shedding overlapping go-to-market functions.