Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Google Acquires Dodgeball.com

Hey this is sweet, i just got this e-mail from dodgeball.com. Mad props to these geeks!

Big news, dodgeball fans! On May 11th, dodgeball.com was acquired by Google!

I'm sure a lot of you have some questions about what this means for you and the future of dodgeball, so we put together a quick Q&A. Let us know if you have any other questions!

Q: Why did dodgeball sell to Google?
A: As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken dodgeball about a far as we can alone. Since we finished grad school (ITP @ NYU), we've been trying to figure out how to grow dodgeball and make it a better service along the way. We talked to a lot of different angel investors and venture capitalists, but no one really "got" what we were doing - that is until we met Google.

The people at Google think like us. They looked at us in a "You're two guys doing some pretty cool stuff, why not let us help you out and let's see what you can do with it" type of way. We liked that. Plus, Alex and I are both Google superfans and the people we've met so far are smart, cool and excited about what they're working on.

Q: What does the acquisition mean to dodgeball? What's going to change?
A: Now that we're part of Google, we'll have more resources available to us. That means Alex and I can get back to building new features. We have a lot of ideas that we've wanted to work on for a long time and we're excited that we will now have the time and resources to actually follow-through with them. There's some cool stuff in the works - stay tuned.

Q: What does the acquisition mean to dodgeball users?
A: We've adopted Google's Privacy Policy (http://www.dodgeball.com/privacy.php) and Terms of Service (http://www.dodgeball.com/tos.php) as our own. You should have received a notice about these new terms. If you disagree with the terms or decide that you don't want to be a part of the new post-Google dodgeball, please delete your account (http://www.dodgeball.com/delete_me.php).

While you can delete your account at any time, if you do so in the next 14 days, your account will be deleted immediately and the information in your profile will not be transferred over to Google.

Q: Will you still be at The Magician / Floyd / 12" / 288 / Lit / Boat / Barramundi / Bleecker Street Bar six nights a week?
A: Of course. Where else would we be? Swing by sometime and meet us for a drink!

Q: Anything else?
A: Do we have time to for a few shoutouts? dodgeball.com would not be around today if it wasn't for the support of friends and family along the way. Special shoutouts to Tom Ainslie, Ken Allard, Pam Bennett, Melissa Camero, Eric Deschamps, Chris Gage, The Happy Corp Global, Rob Hudak, Aaron Ingram, Doug Jaeger, Andy Krucoff, Ken Rabe, James Robinson, Ilana Rosengarten, Clay Shirky, Matt Spangler, Chris Sung, Meghan Trainor, Shawn Van Every and everyone else who's added content, fixed bugs, and spread the word.

Thanks again everyone, and please send any questions / feedback / comments to contact {at[ dodgeball.com!

- The Management (aka Dens + Alex) http://www.dodgeball.com

No comments: