Google never seems to cease with the acquisitions. This time, the web search giant has swallowed video-conferencing software from Swedish company Marratech AB as well as their technical team, which will continue to be located in Sweden. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Marratech"s video-conferencing software is based on research that began in 1995 at the Centre for Distance-Spanning Technology at Lulea university of Technology, Sweden. The software employs an interactive whiteboard and application sharing and works on PCs running Mac, Linux or Windows.
In a blog post, Google said it bought the software to "enable from- the-desktop participation for Googlers in videoconference meetings wherever there"s an Internet connection." The Google spokesperson did not explain how Google plans to make the video-conference software available to Internet users. One possibility is that Google will include the software as a part of Google Apps Premier Edition, a suite of hosted applications targeted at the same enterprise market traditionally dominated by Microsoft Office.