After reporting a monster fiscal quarter (the company has close to $12 billion in cash sitting around now and has hired nearly 2,000 new employees this year), Google made a quiet announcement on its corporate blog tonight – they’ve acquired Swedish startup Marratech for an undisclosed price.
This is the first I’ve heard of Marratech, which is broadly in the e-meeting space and certainly competes with WebEx (recently acquired by Cisco for $3.2 billion). Users are able to communicate via text chat, VOIP and video, and share applications in a virtual meeting.
Their service requires a download, whereas most of the newly released e-meeting solutions are browser based (and therefore have less functionality). The Windows version of the software is 31 MB; the Mac version is just 9 MB. Google already has software on many computers with their GTalk, Desktop and Toolbar applications. Bundling this in isn’t unthinkable.
Google’s enterprise ambitions move forward another step.
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