Why'd Google Buy Postini? Because Gmail's A Toy

by Gregory Sullivan — Wednesday, July 11, 2007, 11:00 AM EDT

Google shelled out $625 million for Postini, the messaging security company. Why would they do that? According to Google: "Google already has world class spam and virus protection as part of the Gmail service." Well, that's nice. But in the big business world, that won't cut it, and Google knows it.

On the official Google Blog, Dave Girouard, the vice president and general manager for Google Enterprise, wrote that the company decided to purchase Postini because its hosted security tools will give Google the ability to address the complex security and compliance issues faced by larger businesses.

"Though [larger enterprises] want to deliver simple, useful hosted applications to their employees," Girouard said, "they're also required to support complex business rules, information security mandates, and an array of legal and corporate compliance issues. In effect, many businesses use legacy systems not because they are the best for their users, but because they are able to support complex business rules. This isn't a tradeoff that any business should have to make."

The "Google Apps" suite of online hosted applications needs to grow up to be considered seriously by business users, who have myriad obligations to their employees, customers, and the government that casual users never think much about. So Google did what they always do: buy the expertise they don't have to get to where they are going. Where are they going? Unclear, but if I was a Microsoft Office salesman, I wouldn't sleep at night.

Tags: Google, Gmail, Mail, GM, OS, gma, googl, GOOG, BU, AI

Why'd Google Buy Postini? Because Gmail's A Toy

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