Google acquires Dodgeball.com!
Posted by Liger™ on 12 May 2005 - 14:12 · 12 comments & 1920 views
Google has acquired New York-based Dodgeball, the cellular SMS hook-up service. "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" This makes 13 companies that Google has acquired.
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?

As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken dodgeball about a far as we can alone. Since we finished grad school, 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.

News source: Dodgeball.com (Site is being hammered)

Here are some key features of "Exact Audio Copy":
  • Usage of the Windows 95 and Windows NT ASPI Interface, so both SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported
  • Hidden sector synchronization (jitter correction)
  • Secure, fast and burst extraction methods selectable. Fast extraction should run at the same speed as other grabbers, but is probably not exact anymore. Burst mode just grabs the audio data without any synchronization.
  • Read error and complete loss of sync detection and correction in secure modes, as far as possible
  • Output of time positions of all non-exact corrections and listen to these positions
  • Copy of ranges of music data, not only tracks
  • Automatic Speed reduction on errors and fallback afterwards
  • Normalization of extracted audio
  • Usage of the Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM Codecs) for direct compression e.g. to MP3 waves
  • Support for the BladeEnc DLL that is usable like an ACM Codec for online MP3 compression
  • Support of external MP3, VQF, RA and AAC encoders for automatic compression after extraction
  • Batch compression and decompression of/to WAV files
  • Compression offset support for exact compression/decompression
  • Detection of pre-track gaps
  • Detection of silence in pre-track gaps
  • Automatic creation of CUE sheets for CDRWin, including all gaps, indicies, track attributes, UPC and ISRC
  • CD player functionality and prelistening to selected ranges
  • Automatic detection of drive features, whether a drive has an accurate stream and/or does caching
  • Sample Offsets for drives with no accurate streams, including the option of filling up missing samples with silence
  • Option for synchronizing tracks for non-accurate stream drives
  • Filename editing with local and remote CDDB database and cdplayer.ini support and more features like ID3 tagging
  • Browse and edit local database
  • Certified Escient CDDB(TM) Compatible
  • Local CDDB support
  • Record and Loop Record functions for recording from LP, radio, etc.
  • Automatic rename of MP3 files according to their ID3 tag
  • Catalog extraction function
  • Multisession (CD-Extra) support
  • CD-Text support
  • CD-Write support for some drives
  • ID3 Tag editor with drag and drop possibility from track listing and database
  • Glitch removal after extraction
  • Small WAV editor with the following functionality: delete, trim, normalize, pad, glitch removal, pop detection, interpolation of ranges, noise reduction, fade in/out, undo (and more)
  • Program is Cardware, so feel free to copy


There are 12 additional comments
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(2 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #1 Posted by markjensen on 12 May 2005 - 14:31
Sounds like these two made out well with a good idea they had. Good for them!

However, the more dominance any single player gets in the computing market, the more people should be wary of them.

Since the linked-to site in the news post seems to try to load forever before timing out for me, perhaps others will find this a useful for additional sources:
http://news.google.com/news?q=dodgeball

(and, yes, the irony of using Google news does not escape me)
Quote this comment #1.1 Posted by kizzaaa on 12 May 2005 - 15:53
QUOTE
Plus, Alex and I are both Google superfans

Quote this comment #1.2 Posted by Jugalator on 12 May 2005 - 16:21
I like that term as a change for the old "fanboy"

"omg you Firefox superfan, you!!1"
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #2 Posted by Gowcra on 12 May 2005 - 14:32
YAY! IM SCOTTISH! doesent matter to me but yay for google!
(3 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #3 Posted by eAi on 12 May 2005 - 14:40
I've no idea what dodgeball is (can't get to the site), but I think its nice that google are supporting original ideas and helping them flourish, instead of just buying our competitors (or introducing competing products tied in with their other services like MS do).
Quote this comment #3.1 Posted by m0digital on 12 May 2005 - 15:16
"Helping them flourish" is flourishing under Google's empire. I don't think its any different from Microsoft practices. MS buys out companies and incorporates their technologies. Google does the same.
Quote this comment #3.2 Posted by DeMo_BR on 12 May 2005 - 15:40
/me totally agrees with m0digital ^^

Google is not playing.. they are not "helping" anybody.
They're in it for the money.. just like MS and any other company.
Quote this comment #3.3 Posted by eAi on 12 May 2005 - 15:52
Clearly they're in it for the money, but you don't see MS buying up "the little guy" often, do you? Anyway, it doesn't really matter either way.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #4 Posted by ThunderRiver on 12 May 2005 - 15:42
Aiiieeeeeee! Dodgeball hurts!
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #5 Posted by Jugalator on 12 May 2005 - 16:19
"This makes 13 companies that Google has acquired."

Hmm, anyone know a link with a summary?

I only knew Keyhole, Picasa and maybe some others off the top of my head.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #6 Posted by indiehead on 13 May 2005 - 12:12
"if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball..."

ARGGGGGHHHHH!!!
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #7 Posted by .:YodaGP:. on 13 May 2005 - 18:25
QUOTE
"This makes 13 companies that Google has acquired."

Hmm, anyone know a link with a summary?

I only knew Keyhole, Picasa and maybe some others off the top of my head.


Just what i was looking for!
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