Google has officially announced its latest acquisition, Postini, an internet security enterprise, bought for $625 million.The deal will be finalized later this year, although the purchase has already been confirmed. According to Google, this major investment is an attempt to improve the existing Google Apps service. With over one thousand small and medium business requesting Google Apps each day, the search engine giant wants to improve the perception of Google Apps as a secure service, as well as offering extended compliance solutions.
In the near future, we can expect new security features to appear in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, but more importantly in Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Postini is a company that specialises in Communication Security and Compliance, and has been protecting over 35,000 businesses worldwide from viruses and malicious internet attacks since 1999. The amount of data recollected daily increases their accuracy significantly with an alleged 99.999 per cent reliability.
Clients don't need to install any software since the whole system is hosted by Postini. Apart from Google, Postini also has other reputable technology partners backing the project, such as McAfee, Authentium and IMlogic. With more than one billion messages processed daily, the company holds privileged information in terms of new internet attacks and therefore have the ability to apply that knowledge to the rest of the clients on their network.
During a public statement on Monday Dave Girouard, Vice President and General Manager of Google Enterprise, affirmed that this deal will help the search engine giant to improve their hosted applications to businesses. Adding more security features to Google hosted applications will certainly motivate more companies to sign up to its services.
Over the course of 2007, Google has acquired eleven companies, and two more are pending acquisition, including Postini. Areas into which Google have diversified are varied, from video game advertising to presentation software, video conferencing, photo-sharing service with geolocation, online RSS feeds and VOIP integration.
Most of their new acquisitions aim to improve existing solutions. Postini is the second purchase of this year on the security area, following the acquisition of GreenBorder Technologies in May this year for an undisclosed sum.
Google and Postini appear to be the perfect match since, apart from adding protection to Gmail users in terms of spam and viruses, the search engine's portfolio will be enhanced with advance features such as e-mail encryption upon request, archival and policy enforcement. Apart from improving their services, it will also increase the amount and quality of data for artificial intelligence purposes, therefore Google will enjoy further accuracy when detecting the location from which spam and viruses originate.
The agreement to acquire Postini for $625 million will be finalized by the third-quarter of 2007; hence, the integration of Postini's services with Google Apps is likely to materialise by the end of the year.
