Google has acquired Korean “blog specialty” company TNC (Tatter and Company). Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
So what exactly does being a “blog specialty” company entail? “For those who are not familiar with us, think of TNC as Korea’s Automattic – a company that develops a cool blogging platform that’s favorited [sic] by the nation’s A-list bloggers, and also works closely with the open source community,” writes TNC CEO Chang-Won Kim on his blog.
As I have talked about a number of times lately, blogging platforms are getting more social, integrating social networks more than ever before. Movable Type, WordPress, and even Google’s own Blogger have all been in the news recently for subjects related to this. Kim says that TNC has been integrating social networks into its platform earlier than everyone else with its TextCube service. Perhaps Google sees some innovation potential with the company and wants them aboard.
Some think that the acquisition might hide an ulterior motive. “Google hasn’t been too keen on acquiring companies in Asia so far, and this is their first acquisition of a Korean company; it is almost certainly a strategic move, because I somehow doubt that Google – who owns Blogger – is in need of a blogging platform from a purely technological point of view,” says Stan Schroeder at Mashable.
Even Kim notes the significance of the acquisition to Google from a geographical standpoint:
Speaking of Google in Asia, one piece of fact that my American friends have really hard time perceiving is that Google is an underdog in this part of the globe. Korea is the world’s sixth largest market in terms of internet users, and yet Google has a market share that can only be described as “minor” in Korea.
Sometimes it seems to us here in America that Google is dominating the world, but there is still plenty left that the company has yet to conquer. Is this just the beginning of Google’s invasion of the Far East? Will we start seeing Asian acquisitions on a more frequent basis in Google’s future?
