Astute Searchblog reader Rohit Khare points me to this odd passage on page 77 of the Google S1:
2003 Equity Incentive Plan
Our 2003 Equity Incentive Plan was assumed by us in connection with our acquisition of Ignite Logic, Inc. in April 2004. At April 23, 2004, options to purchase a total of (blank) shares of Class A common stock were….
Well, the purchase was in fact covered by a local paper (the firm is based near Sacramento, Ca.).
What is Ignite Logic, Inc.? It’s a startup which helps law firms set up web sites. But why buy them? Hey, if you have good tech and processes to get a law firm’s site up and running, one might imagine it just might scale to the entire SMB market (and beyond). Recall my “Incubation Platform” post – about how Google might leverage its platform to let others build on top of their infrastructure? You thought I was smoking something, eh? Nope.
Perhaps this has something to do with Trademark issues? I couldn’t see Google buying them for anything other than that.
That, or they’re after David Ferguson and/or his patents. He formerly worked at Intuit, DST Output (financial services statementing and marketing vendor) and Caere (OCR & imaging). Has a few patents in imaging.
Right, pb… I used to work with a lawyer who was a patent super-freak. He’d patent anything on a whim…
This is to do with an upcoming version of Google Books…
Did someone say Caere?
Wayne Rosing, Google’s development exec, used to work there.