Google announces acquisition of online polling start up Polar
12 Sep 2014
Google announced yesterday its acquisition of an online polling startup Polar in a bid to bolster Google+.
Though world's largest internet search company had not been able to make much headway with its social networking efforts in the Facebook-dominated web space, it constantly makes new moves to help boost Google+ around the world.
Polar specialises in instant online polls through smartphones, tablets and PCs.
The service can also be used for getting people's opinion in selecting a logo for a start up, with the quick rating concept helping serve over half a billion polls in the last eight months. It had 1.1 million active voters in September, Polar's founder Luke Wroblewski said in a blog post yesterday.
Confirming the acquisition in a Google+ post, Google welcomed Wroblewski and his team to make "G+ even more awesome." According to commentators it was not clear what exactly the new team would work on with Google+ but according to Re/Code, the new work would include mobile design for Google+.
Wroblewski's writings and observations, including the book Mobile First, serve as a highly respected guide across the industry.
According to Polar's blog, the company's tools would run till the end of this year, after which it would allow its customers to download and save archives of the polls and data.
The Register reported that the purchase suggested Google did not plan on giving up on its presence in the social network segment.
Launched with great fanfare in 2011 with heavy integration into the company's other services, Google+ had not been able to dent Facebook's stranglehold of the attention-seeking web world.
According to a June poll conducted by research firm Statista, Facebook claimed a 38.6-per cent share of traffic in the social network space, as against to 2.5 per cent for Google+. Google-owned YouTube came in next with 36.25 per cent – which explained Google's move to add Plus to its 'tube.
Polar however, is not abandoning its customers and said it would offer support for publishers to create new polls with the service until the end of this year.
After that, according to the company, it would be maintaining embedded polls and making all poll data available for download until 30 June, 2015 when the service would close for good.
