THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: Google Fiber Isn't A Test, It's World Domination

Markets are fighting back as Europe blows up and factory orders miss. Shares of GOOG are up strong. Investors continue look for Android momentum and monetization of smartphones and tablets; direction for Motorola; the resurgence of Google TV; continued growth and monetization of YouTube; expansion of social network Google+; and progress in other initiatives (location-based services, mapping, Google Wallet, Google Music, Google Fiber, etc.). The stock trades at approximately 11.8x Enterprise Value / EBIT.
Android's Lead Reduced (comScore via TechCrunch)
comScore released its latest quarterly figures on the state of the mobile market in the U.S. based on active users, and while the exact numbers are different, the basic picture is the same as the one that Strategy Analytics painted earlier in the week around smartphone sales: Apple’s iOS continues to see the strongest gains and Android has remained in the lead but with its lead reduced somewhat. There are now 234 million U.S. residents using mobile devices, with smartphone usage up 4% to 110 million, giving the country a smartphone penetration of 47%.
Google's Fiber "Proof Of Concept" Is Anything But (Launch)
Everyone wants fiber. The evil folks at cable companies and telecoms are sabotaging fiber in order to maintain their legacy businesses: be they content in the case of Time Warner or phone calls and text messaging if it's AT&T. As the Internet gets faster, you spend more time online. This is one of the core tenets of Google's success. Instead of adding features to Gmail, YouTube and Google search, they historically focused on making things faster. Why? Because speed drives usage. Google Fiber is not a test, it's a takeover plan.
Google+ Big Brand Adoption Growing (Search Engine Watch)
Three out of four of the Top 100 brands are now on Google+. In the past two months, Visa, Hermes, and Wells Fargo have all joined the Google+ network with their own fan pages. Growth is slowing, but that’s to be expected, given the astronomical adoption rate among big brands when Google+ was first introduced. Of those with Google+ pages, 30% have these pages display in search results for their brand name, according to the BrightEdge Social Share study for the month of July. That’s 6x higher than in February. BrightEdge surmises, "This could be due to the rising importance of social content in search results along with the growing adoption of Google+ by brands and users."
Google Snaps Up Social Media Marketing Firm Wildfire (The New York Times)
Google has agreed to acquire Wildfire, a social media marketing firm, for an undisclosed sum. Founded four years ago, Wildfire helps brands manage their social campaigns across sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. It has roughly 16,000 customers, including Spotify, Virgin, Amazon and Unilever. Facebook was reportedly the leading suitor for Wildfire Interactive, but Google won out. That's after Google attempted to buy Buddy Media, but lost out to Salesforce, which bought the company for about $700 million.
No More Acquisitions Relating To Google+ (TechCrunch)
This week in the tech news rumor mill: A source close to Google says that the company has put a stop to all acquisitions related to Google+, at least until the end of this year. Google is wary of both growing the Google+ team right now and providing the product with any additional resources until January. The Google+ project itself is not on hold but, if this rumor is indeed correct and Google is cutting back on expanding the team’s resources, this could be an indication that Google+ isn’t doing quite as well as the company’s glowing public comments would indicate.

Google Acquires Wildfire, Will Now Sell Facebook And Twitter Marketing Services

Google has just bought social marketing software developer Wildfire, which lets brands serve marketing and ad campaigns on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn. Wildfire has grown to 400 employees over the last four years and now serves 16,000 customers. [Update: We've now learned from a Wildfire investor that the company sold to Google for $350 million, higher than the $250 million price we and others previously reported.]
The acquisition will allow Google to provide advanced software and services to brands who want to run contests, sweepstakes, branded games and more on Google+. Wildfire will still operate as a marketing tool for brands on Google’s competing platforms, including Facebook, putting the search giant in a curious position where it earns money on the success of its rivals.
Google bid on buying Buddy Media but lost the deal to Salesforce. With Oracle buying other social marketing leaders Vitrue and Involver, Wildfire was the last top-tier startup in the space. Today’s deal leaves this moment, another popular marketing platform, as a possible buy for old-world enterprise juggernauts like IBM or SAP.
Now it’s successfully bought one of Facebook’s biggest marketing partners. [Update: Dave McClure of 500 Startups, an early Wildfire investor, this morning commented here that the $250 million price tag we reported was "substantially lower than actual". Now we've learned that another investor has said Google bought Wildfire for $350 million -- nearly a 25X multiple on the $14.1 million it had raised through its Series B.]
But Google hasn’t directly entered the social ad space yet. Wildfire only offers ad buying through a partnership with startup Adaptly. [Update: That's why I've just published "Wildfire Only Sells Ads Through Its Partner Adaptly, So Will Google Buy Them Too?"]

Wildfire claims there will be no disruption or immediate changes to the service it offers, which includes ad buying (via Adaptly), feed publishing, Page management, social app and contest development, analytics, social monitoring:

“We remain focused on helping brands run and measure their social engagement and ad campaigns across the entire web and across all social services — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more — and to deliver rich and satisfying experiences for their consumers. To this end, Wildfire will operate as usual, and there will be no changes to our service and support for our customers.

That puts Google in an odd spot, where it will benefit if social networks such as Facebook and Twitter rise in popularity amongst brands. This hedges it against failure of Google+ as play to gain ad-targetable social data, but could heat up the on-going API battles between the top social platforms.
What if Facebook denied Wildfire API access? That could sting Google but it’s unlikely as it would send a shockwave through Facebook’s developer ecosystem. Facebook may have to grit its teeth and watch Google cash in on brands trying to infiltrate the news feed and its mobile apps. Though since it decides who gets early access to new features that can attract clients, Facebook could subtlety hurt Wildfire by favoring its competitors.
Wildfire will help handle owned marketing, such as handling Pages and other properties brands control, to complement Google’s DoubleClick AdX/Admeld paid marketing service for buying ads on search and other websites. The acquisition shows that Google understands that ads can’t do it all. Tons of brand spend is going towards managing their presences on social networks, and now it will get a slice of that pie too.
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For more on Google’s acquisition of Wildfire, read: “Wildfire Only Sells Ads Through Its Partner Adaptly, So Will Google Buy Them Too?“
I’ll also be discussing the acquisition on stage this Friday with Facebook’s VP of ads engineering Greg Badros at TechCrunch’s Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp in the Bay Area. There’s still a few last tickets available.

Mark Zuckerberg's Sister Arielle Now Works For Google

Google's acquisition of Wildfire Interactive, one of Facebook's top marketing partners, is awkward for the social network on a business level.
But it's even more awkward on a personal level.
That's because one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sister, Arielle, works for Wildfire as a junior product manager.
So she's soon going to be a Google employee, working to undermine her brother's dominance in the social sphere.
We hear Mark tried to get Arielle to join Facebook. Unlike their older sister Randi, who succumbed to Mark's entreaties and ran consumer marketing for Facebook for years before recently striking out on her own, Arielle decided to set an independent course from the get-go.
She's spoken out on her blog about Facebook's recent design changes.
And she's also active on Quora, the question-and-answer site started by some ex-Facebookers. One of the questions she answered: "Which startups would be good acquisitions for Facebook?"