So everyone by now has caught wind of the news of Google's latest acquisition. Google Buys Data Visualization Software Trendalyzer from Gapminder.
The question now is what they plan to do with this acquisition. The was a Gapminder presentation posted on Google Video earlier this month. As shown in the Gapminder presentation at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7996617766640098677 shows enhancements in bringing statistics to life. While the speaker definitely falls under the Model Presenter (<- blogged about this earlier) category, there was no direct application to an existing service.
What will Google do now? Most of the time, predicting future actions based on unexpected acquisitions prove futile. Nevertheless, I will have some fun and take a crack at it.
- Incorporate Data Visualization Features in their anticipated Google PowerPoint clone offering. According to TechCrunch last month, Google's online version of PowerPoint was in the works. In the meantime, we'll have to wait for GPowerPoint and see whether it is a clone of other web services such as Thumbstacks, or Zoho Show. And further down the road, perhaps see them incorporate data visualization features for graph generation in GPowerPoint? That would really put the service over the top!
- This is the more obvious of the two but would also be less revolutionary. They will incorporate it to Google Analytics. On their Google Office Suite side of things, perhaps they will extend their offering to incorporate a Visio clone. A potential candidate to acquire being Giffy. Although, Giffy's business model would have to be revamped to fit under the Google scheme. This goes back to why Google is less likely to acquire something like Salesforce. (Regardless, as mentioned in a previous entry, it would still be neat for Salesforce to integrate offline support with Firefox 3.0.)
It is certainly difficult to resist speculating on all the things Google may do and I, for one, succumbed to it. What're your thoughts on the Data Visualization acquisition?