Monday, 19 March 2007
Mountain View, Calif., Kigali, Rwanda and Nairobi, Kenya, March 19, 2007 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced separate partnerships with the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure and the Kenya Education Network (KENET). As a result, Rwanda’s educational institutions and government ministries, and Kenya’s universities are starting to use Google Apps™ – Google’s set of hosted and customizable communications services. Students in both African countries as well as Rwandan government officials will have access to free communications tools including email, shared calendars, instant messaging and word processing under their institutions’ domain names.
Rwandan Minister of State for Energy and Communications, The Hon Albert Butare, said: “This partnership will be a boost in terms of services offered to our Rwandan Academic Institutions, allowing them to collaborate in their learning activities. Furthermore, I believe communication between students and their lecturers will be enhanced as users throughout the country will now be using the same state-of-the-art, cutting edge technology that is available in other parts of the world.”
Three Rwandan universities – the National University of Rwanda, the Kigali Institute for Education and the Kigali Institute for Science and Technology – will initially have access to Google Apps Education Edition, while the country’s government ministries will be using Google Apps Standard Edition. During this first phase, around 20,000 users in Rwanda will have access to these services. A broader countrywide rollout will follow shortly afterwards.
The University of Nairobi’s 50,000 students will be the first to be offered Google Apps for Education in Kenya. These services will then be extended to 150,000 Kenyan students at universities across the country. The rollout will be jointly coordinated by Google and KENET.
Shona Brown, Senior Vice President of Business Operations at Google added: “Google has a simple ambition – to help organize the world’s information, making it universally accessible and useful. For us, universality is crucial because we believe everyone should have access to the same services – wherever they live, whatever their language and regardless of income. I am delighted that we have signed this deal and look forward to working with other African governments to make life-enhancing services like free email, instant messaging and PC-to-PC phone calls more widely available across Africa.”
Google Apps allows institutions as well as individuals to use Google’s communication and collaboration applications under their own domain names. All services are hosted by Google and are available to users via any web-based PC. Google Apps includes the following services:
- Gmail™ – provides users with 2 gigabytes of storage, highly effective spam filtering and powerful search. Gmail includes instant messaging within the email interface;
- Google Calendar™ – is an online calendar that makes it easy for people to organize their lives and share schedules with others;
- Google Talk™ – lets users make PC-to-PC voice calls and send instant messages to each other for free;
- Google Docs & Spreadsheets™ – allows people to create and collaborate on documents and spreadsheets without the need to email attachments back and forth. Different people from within the same organization can work on a document at the same time. All revisions are recorded for editing, and controls enable people to define who can and cannot share the information; and
- Google Page Creator™ – This what-you-see-is-what-you-get web page authoring tool lets domain administrators build simple web pages for their domain and publish them to the web even if they don’t have any website building experience.
About Google Inc.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program, which is the largest and fastest growing in the industry, provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
Contact:
Emmanuel Evita
emmanuele@google.com
650-253-8175
Friday, 16 March 2007
More Information about the acquisition:
Frequently asked questions
Background
Q. What is Adscape Media?
A. Adscape Media is a small in-game advertising company based in San Francisco California. Adscape Media offers dynamic delivery of advertising with plot and storyline integration - making its solutions a truly interactive marketing platform. Adscape Media supports sophisticated demographic and geographic targeting and also provides a robust reporting interface for marketers.
Q. Why did Google acquire Adscape Media?
A. In-game advertising is an area where we believe Google could add a lot of value to users, advertisers and publishers. Adscape Media’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current advertising solutions for advertisers and publishers.
Q. What are the terms of the acquisition?
A. The terms of the acquisition are confidential and the deal is officially closed.
Q. How much did Google pay?
A. The terms of the acquisition are confidential and the deal is officially closed.
Q. Will Google assume full operational control of Adscape, or will Adscape remain autonomous?
A. We are excited to have the Adscape team join the Google team. We will work together on moving this project forward.
Q. Why did Adscape Media decide to sell to Google?
A. We found that there was a great fit with their technology, team and culture.
Q. Has Google previously incorporated in-game advertising into its ads services?
A. No.
Adscape Media Partners & Business
Q. What does this mean for Adscape Media’s partners?
A. We plan to continue working with the developer, publisher and advertiser communities. Many of our partners have already been informed of the acquisition. If you have questions, you can contact us directly at: info@Adscapemedia.com.
Q. Will current partners continue to get paid?
A. Yes, current partners will continue to get paid - and we will honor any open contracts.
Q. When will Google integrate in-game advertising into the Google advertising platform?
A. At this time, we do not have news to share about the integration plans.
Industry/Business
Q. Do you already have deals signed with game developers?
A. We have been in discussions with many in the game development community and hope to partner with both large and small game publishing companies.
Q. Given the dramatic growth of the gaming market in recent years, how much advertising market share does Google hope to gain from this acquisition, both immediately and over time?
A. We don’t release specific projections but we think there is great value in video game advertising. As more and more people spend time playing video games, we think we can create opportunities for advertisers to reach their target audiences while maintaining a high quality, engaging user experience. That said, we will test ways of successfully implementing this form of advertising and Adscape’s technology will be instrumental in those tests.
Q. Will the in-game ads continue to be integrated into the game or will they become text ads similar to AdSense format?
A. As this is a recent acquisition it is too early to say what the ads will look like. We will explore a variety of options to determine what is best for the advertiser and user.
Q. Where does Google see in-game advertising going in the future, in terms of both revenue and the technology itself?
A. We don’t release specific projections but we think there is great value in video game advertising. As more and more people spend time playing video games, we think we can create opportunities for advertisers to reach their target audiences while maintaining a high quality, engaging user experience. That said, we will test ways of successfully implementing this form of advertising and Adscape’s technology will be instrumental in those tests.
Over the past few years, the video game experience has become richer and more interactive. We think this rich environment is a perfect medium to deliver relevant, targeted advertising that ultimately benefits the user, the video game publisher and the advertiser.
Monday, 12 March 2007
Monday, 5 March 2007
Tuesday, 27 February 2007
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – February 27, 2007 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced today that Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer, will present at the following investor events:
Morgan Stanley Technology Conference
Monday, March 5, 2007
3:15 p.m. ET / 12:15 p.m. PT
Bear Stearns 20th Annual Media Conference
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
8:45 a.m. ET / 5:45 a.m. PT
To access the audio webcasts of the presentations, please visit investor.google.com/webcast.html.
About Google Inc.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
Contact:
Maria Shim
Investor Relations
650-253-7663
marias@google.com
###
Google is a registered trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.
Monday, 26 February 2007
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