In a post on Angstro’s blog, Rohit Khare bids farewell to his users. He has decided to sell the company to Google and work with them on Google Me. While the Google Me project is still unconfirmed, Khare has created a number of products that would be beneficial to such a product.
Salim and I would like to thank everyone who was part of the adventure — not least, the thousands of users and beta testers who helped define our products and inspired our whole team.
While our work here may be done, the struggle for open, interoperable social networks is still only just beginning, and I’m looking forward to working on that in my new role at Google.
Though many view Google as having all thumbs and two left feet when it comes to social networking, they have made major moves in that direction. Primarily, they have acquired talent and the Khare will be a valuable asset to the team.
He will likely be working with Max Levchin, the former CEO of Slide, CTO of PayPal and Google’s newest VP of engineering, as well as Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra, who was reportedly instrumental in recruiting Khare.
Khare’s earlier work revolves around creating an “open, interoperable social networks.” This seems to align with Google’s efforts in social media. Rather than erect another walled-garden like Facebook, they mostly stick to an open infrastructure. At Angstro, they built a service that pulled information about your friends and colleagues from the blogosphere and social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. This data was then delivered to you, but this same technology could also be very useful for Google Me.
According to someone familiar to the situation, Khare was swayed by Vic Gundotra’s pledge to be serious about social. Google has confirmed the acquisition, but declined to comment on Khare’s official position. Khare could not be reached for comment.
Even though Google Me has not been confirmed, it seems pretty obvious Google is up to something. It looks as though they will leverage Gmail, against the protests of many, to build out a social hub of some kind. There is no reason Google Buzz should be embedded physically in your Gmail, but it is. Why integrate Voice Calling so tightly within the email interface? You cannot access this feature outside of your inbox.
They are up to something in this is just another piece of the puzzle.
via LA Times