Two Google stories in a row on TechnoKimchi. This one is just as big as the Chrome news to me. And to Korean bloggers.
Google Korea announced just hours ago that it acquired TNC(short for "Tatter and Company"). TNC is the company behind the blogging platform Textcube, formerly known as Tattertools. Basically Textcube is the Korean version of Wordpress. The most popular blogging platform. It also recently launched a hosting service named Textcube Dot Com, which combines the best of blogging and SNS.
Google's acquisition of TNC has lots of implications. This one not only marks the very first acquisition of any company by Google Korea but also implies its strong will for playing with Naver and Daum in the Korean market despite Google Korea's official title "R&D Center."
But here's the reason why this is so important: Korean Web 2.0 startup market has been dead for a while. There's simply no "exit". Startup Web companies can't generate revenues, can't go IPO, can't be sold. No exit. Period. Thus, no innovation.
TNC has been one of the most famous Web 2.0 startups in Korea. And it was finally sold to none other than Google!!! Bloggers are going quite nuts, obviously.
Chang Kim mentioned once on his blog the lack of innovation in Korea. Saddened by the current state of (lack of) innovation in the Korean Web industry, he's been working hard on Open Web Asia and other things, hoping Korea would be a better place for Web innovations.
And guess what? He's the star today! Chang is actually one of the co-CEOs of TNC and soon, he'll be working as a Google employee, probably in charge of Textcube. Congratulations, chang!!!
Starting from tomorrow, we're going to the biggest holiday season of the year: Chuseok. And this is perfect (and good) news to know as we go into holidays. Of course, there's much to be discussed about the deal and I'm not sure how active Google has been in terms of acquiring local startups in different parts of Asia. But for now, I'm just happy that a great startup company has found a great acquirer.
What do you guys think of the acquisition?
More: Chang Kim himself wrote a post on the deal. Go check it out. You can tell how excited he is :)
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web 2.0 asia
