Companies Google cant afford to lose.

I love Google. Like big time. It has so much to offer and free. Now just because of that love, I want Google should get all the best sites that I use daily and it pretty much does it. Youtube was acquired because it is the largest source of online video and preferred Video search tool and Google could not miss out being the top site in Video.

Not that Google does not have things in its bouquet to offer us, Google had Google Video, but youtube was and is still a clear winner in online Video space, so Google gobbled it up. Similarly when it comes to Social networking, Google has orkut, but more than 50% of orkut's population is Brazilians and Indians. (In US, its something unheard of) while facebook is growing at an insane rate. So thats the number 1 in the list and Thats what Google cant afford to lose. The list that I have is not too big, but covers various sectors and while Google has its offering in all of them, they are not so popular because of various reasons.

Here is my list:-
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Friendfeed
4. Digsby
5. Jajah
6. Skype
7. Wixi
8. Fring

Talking from No. 2 mentioned here, Google still has Jaiku and it by no means is a competition to twitter because twitter is 1 more thing which is growing at a mad pace just like faceebook & friendfeed. Google bought Jaiku & thought it can make a worthy competitor in it to twitter, but just like orkut is nothing compared to facebook, jaiku is nothing compared to twitter. Friendfeed is an amazing concept and like twitter is founded by ex-googlers. It is 1 thing which aggregates data from 59 different websites which are all leaders or good competitors in their respective categories and updates your friends about whatever you do on any 1 of them. Great idea and it has grown beyond that and today worldwide has awesome users who update stuff there every second.

Nothing matches friendfeed today and Google has to gobble this up for a wide range of audience and data. Talking about Digsby, it ain't that big yet. But BOY OH BOY what it does is awesome value and Google has to gobble this up now or else it will pay a huge price later on if this slips out of its hands or even if it acquires Digsby later when it will grow like others mentioned before (twitter, friendfeed & facebook). IM+Email+social networking updates all in just 1 thing is cool. No one does it as good as these guys.

Jajah is the current VOIP leader managing Yahoo! Voice and Gizmo5 also. So it makes sense that Google gets Jajah and gets the leadership and control of VOIP world. Not that I have any complaints with Grandcentral, but VOIP is 1 area where Google is kind of not present at all. If this happens (Which ideally should) Google can take on any damn VOIP player including Skype. Talking of Skype, there were speculations that it is a loss making thing for ebay and it might be sold off. Google was considered as the front runner to buy it, but even in these times Skype is going strong because of the "Unlimited plans" and opening up a very little. This is 1 huge user base which Google has to get anyhow, by hook or crook. And VOIP is getting bigger and better and its not restricted to PCs only but is getting on mobiles too. So Fring comes in.        

These people just don't sleep and turn out improvements and new versions and features by dozens. Google has to get this to get a monopoly in the mobile VOIP market. They are growing like crazy and adding 1,00,000 users per month according to the last post on their blog.

Last thing on my list is wixi. I have several online data storage accounts and some of them have features which wixi does not have yet. Livedrive caught my attention and I was on it. Unlimited free cloud storage, desktop access and what not, but as always economy hurt them and they went paid. There are a whole lot of online data storage sites, but Wixi gives me unlimited storage for free. Yup, you heard it "unlimited & free". And their uploads are fast, their whole web UI is great and while they had competitors earlier like Livedrive, hordit , Ziddu and more, most of them have gone paid. Every1 was talking about Gdrive and it has not come yet. I am expecting it to go live on 1st April this year and if it does not, then Google just should get Wixi and get it re branded as GDrive.

Thats pretty much it and the list is awesome because if Google gets these things, it will be 70-80% of what people do on the internet. I have high hopes on these guys and I know they can pull this off. Lets see.

Fingers crossed on this 1 and I hope Google is listening,
H@rdeep.