In 2007, a startup called Click Forensics began operations in San Antonio.
The company, founded by Tom Cuthbert and Tom Charvet, tackled the problem of click fraud online. Austin Ventures provided its initial $500,000 seed stage funding.
Click Forensics ended up moving to Austin and pivoted to become a marketing analytics firm called Adometry.
On Tuesday, Google announced it bought Adometry for an undisclosed price. Since its inception, Adometry has raised $29.1 million in venture funding from Austin Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Sierra Ventures, according to the company.
Adometry and Google both announced the deal it in separate blog posts.
“Adometry is joining Google, where they will build on the momentum of our existing measurement and analytics offerings, which include Google Analytics Premium as well as other products,” according to a Google blog post.
“Attribution solutions, like Adometry’s, help businesses better understand the influence that different marketing tools — digital, offline, email, and more — have along their customers’ paths to purchase (http://goo.gl/tXTliw). This heightened understanding, in turn, enables businesses to measure marketing impact, allocate their resources more wisely, and provide people with ads and messages that they’re likely to care about.”
Adometry moved into new headquarters last year at the Lakewood Center Building II on Capital of Texas Highway and has about 135 employees, according to this profile Silicon Hills News did of the company in March.
“We couldn’t be more excited to join Google — a company that shares our core values. Not only do they focus on innovation and solving big problems, but also like Adometry, they seek to provide brands and their agency partners with the analytics and insights to improve the performance of their marketing campaigns,” Paul Pellman, Adometry’s CEO, wrote in a blog post on its site.
Tag: Google
Photo courtesy of AT&T
The company already delivers its 1 Gigabit per second broadband Internet network to Austin. It began to offer service there after Google announced plans for a 1 Gigabit network in Austin.
Google also announced earlier this year that San Antonio is on a short list of cities which may receive its Google fiber high speed network.
Why is this a big deal for Central Texas’ technology industry? Because Austin already has a Google Fiber network underway and AT&T is offering the service there. San Marcos-based Grande Communications has also announced plans for a 1 Gigabit network in Austin. And Time Warner announced plans to increase its speeds to 300 mbps up from 50 mbps in June.
Competition is good for the consumer. It means lower prices and better products.
But the benefit doesn’t stop there.
Startup companies and established companies with access to high-speed networks can dream up the innovative products that will drive our economy forward. They will be able to compete on a global scale with other countries that have much faster networks in place already.
In addition, the ability to get high speed Internet to all areas of the city benefits everyone because an educated population is a productive population.
“Similar to previously announced metro area selections in Austin and Dallas and advanced discussions in Raleigh-Durham and Winston-Salem, communities that have suitable network facilities, and show the strongest investment cases based on anticipated demand and the most receptive policies will influence these future selections and coverage maps within selected areas,” according to a news release.
In addition to San Antonio, the other metropolitan areas includes: Atlanta, Augusta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, Greensboro, Houston, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Oakland, Orlando, San Diego, St. Louis, San Francisco, and San Jose.”
AT&T U-verse with GigaPower services are available in Austin and some surrounding communities, and are expected to roll out in parts of Dallas this summer. AT&T is also expanding its coverage in the Austin area.
The big takeaway from watching this summer’s buddy comedy, The Internship, about two middle aged laid off salesmen who become interns at Google, is don’t get so enamored of the latest technology and gadgets that you neglect real life.
And Google, for all its glory, is just a tool that humans use to get what they need to live better lives.
When technology rules our lives, we become unbalanced.
The older interns, played by Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, teach the young technology whizzes how to live in the real world and to appreciate every moment. The young technology whizzes also teach Wilson and Vaughn how to use technology to create better products. The intern groups must compete against each other in a series of tasks and the best team wins jobs at Google.
“We’re looking at some sort of mental Hunger Games against a bunch of Genius kids for just a handful of jobs,” Wilson says in the movie.
While a lot of the movie is just pure fiction, Google really does make its new Googlers, called Nooglers, wear multi-colored beanies with propellers on them. But another thing Google does is it pays its interns really well with a software intern making $6,463 a month.
Glassdoor did a report earlier this year and reported that Google ranks number one as the best place to intern.
The movie is hilarious. But as a big Hollywood motion picture, the Internship is loaded with stereotypes that some may find offensive. Google, though, comes through looking like a star.
By now you’ve probably heard of SOPA, the Stop Online Privacy Act introduced by San Antonio Congressman Lamar Smith.
The jist of it is that media and entertainment companies want to protect the copyright on their content from pirates. Not too many people would take issue with that.
But the legislation would effectively give content producers the ability to censor the web.
On Wednesday, dozens of websites including Wikipedia, Reddit, WordPress, Craigslist and others blacked out their content in protest over the legislation. Google, which also opposes SOPA, blacked out its logo.
PIPA, the Protect IP ACT, introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont is already losing support.
But when Congress reconvenes work will begin on SOPA again, according to this article from Engadget.
San Antonio-based Rackspace Hosting has been working with lawmakers to fix the bills to effectively fight online piracy and avoid Internet disruption or “imposing unreasonable costs on Internet users and service providers,” Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier wrote in a blog post.
He said the existing bills, SOPA and PIPA, are “well-intentioned, but would do more harm than good. Their enforcement provisions could be easily evaded, and they would undermine the security and stability of the Internet.
Meanwhile, Congressman Smith contends that SOPA is vastly misunderstood. He also blasted Wikipedia for what he called a publicity stunt.
“It is ironic that a website dedicated to providing information is spreading misinformation about the Stop Online Piracy Act. The bill will not harm Wikipedia, domestic blogs or social networking sites,” according to Lamar. “This publicity stunt does a disservice to its users by promoting fear instead of facts. Perhaps during the blackout, Internet users can look elsewhere for an accurate definition of online piracy.”
Smith says the “Stop Online Piracy Act only targets foreign websites that are primarily dedicated to illegal activity. It does not grant the Justice Department the authority to seek a court order to shut down any website operated in the U.S.”
Sopa and PIPA Protest Sites
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