Google acquires Postini
July 9th, 2007 by Randy Stewart, Product Manager
Today Google acquired anti-spam and security company Postini. Postini offers a host of services for businesses around communications security, but the reason I mention them is they are best known for their hosted anti-spam solution. Sound familiar?
According to the Google blog, Google acquired Postini as Google Apps “needed a more complete way to address these information security and compliance issues in order to better support the enterprise community.”
VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall quotes Google’s Eric Schmidt saying “With the addition of Postini, our apps are not just simple and appealing to users — they can also streamline the complex information security mandates within these organizations.”
More specifically, Bill Burnham thinks that this is a pretty clear signal that Google is going after Microsoft’s Exchange business.
What does Postini do for Google’s bottom line? Om Malik on GigaOm believes that Google’s acquisitions are mirroring Cisco’s “buy and grow” strategy that built them into the networking giant they are today.
Finally, Fred Wilson (aka “A VC”) commented today on what Google ought to do with Postini post acquisition.
1 – allow me to search my quarantined mail…
2 – figure out how to stop grabbing verification emails…
3 – let me manage my quarantined mail in the gmail interface…
4 – let me see the reputation of the sender in the quarantined mailbox…
Thankfully, we’ve got Fred covered on 3 of his 4 requests (and we’ll have #3 for Yahoo! Mail soon).
Congrats to Postini on the acquisition.