Google's relentless onslaught of acquiring entities and companies has not shown any sign of slowing down. Just recently, the tech giant acquired Odysee, a photo application that is currently compatible with the iOS and Android platforms. By acquiring the application, users will be able to add more offline and private sharing features to its Google+ Photos service. Odysee lets users automatically back up photos they snap and videos they record on their cameras and tablets, and add to their hard drive space on their personal computers. In addition, the application also brings another layer of private sharing to the table as it lets users set up private, automatic sharing with other people.
After being acquired by the search giant, the app will shut down on Feb. 23 and the team responsible for making the application will join the Google+ team in order to augment the photo sharing experience with millions of Google+ users.
News of the acquisition was announced through a note on Odysee's home page. In addition, there was also a notification sent out to those users who have the application installed on their smartphones and tablets. The application will no longer be present on Apple's App Store as well as Google's Play Store.
There are several probable reasons why Google has acquired the application. Its social media platform Google+ does not bring sufficient users to its environment, compared to Facebook and Twitter. From statistical data from June 2014, Google caters to 540 million monthly users while Facebook has approximately 2.2 billion users, which is nearly one-third of the world's entire population. While Google's search engine is the most popular search engine compared to the likes of Bing and Yahoo!, the company is struggling to snare enough users to rival those of the social networking giant.
Google's Orkut was one of the earliest social networking platforms out there but due to the rise of Facebook and Twitter, Google had no choice but to shut it down.
