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Google eyes Meebo buy

Google is looking to buy social-products company Meebo for about $100 million, according to a report in All Things Digital.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor
Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
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  • Ed was a member of the CNET crew that won a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors for general excellence online. He's also edited pieces that've nabbed prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and others.
Edward Moyer

Google is in talks to buy social-products company Meebo for about $100 million and is close to a deal, according to a report.

All Things Digital's Liz Gannes offered little more than that in her report, which cites unnamed sources. Gannes said Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg did not reply to a request for comment and that Google said it wouldn't comment on rumors.

Meebo started out as a Web-based instant messaging service that emulates services like Yahoo IM but requires no downloading or installation. Developers can create applications and services to run on the architecture, and the service also provides "Rooms" designed to make it easy to share media and Web sites.

That's evolved into the Meebo Bar, a JavaScript plug-in that sits at the bottom of Web pages and enables a lot of different social interaction and sharing features. Meebo also has mobile versions of its products.

As Gannes points out, the company's homepage is now pushing a tool that lets people "create an interest profile to get new and timely information about the things that matter to you."