Just a while back, Google had one of the biggest social media network presence in certain countries including Brazil and India. Then, Orkut, a social media service was much more prevalent in Brazil and India than in any other country and the resulting decline led the search giant to shut down the services.
Benefit from such move for new startup called Hello
It has come out, however, that the founder of the Orkut service, Orkut Büyükkökten, is now thinking of putting a new platform on the field. He is now trying to build a new social media network called Hello Network, which will be based entirely on the interests of people.
The new social network will not be part of Google, but it will have some cash injection from the search media giant. News sources have indicated that Google has been on a drive where it has been backing up many ventures and startups from some of its former employees, and some of these employers do include the Hello creators. This will just in turn add to the complex ways of Google corporate ventures and their corporate financing.
It’s unclear though unlikely that the Android maker might be doing this to get back into the social media game, or doing this to reap financial rewards. However, the deals resemble Google’s attempts to keep their best engineers and familiar faces close to the company. When asked for comment the company refused to comment, and some of the engineers who have been sponsored by the search giant including Orkut, Keith Coleman and Noam Lovinsky also refused to comment on the news.
A source close to the deals said that the search mogul was injecting cash into the startups through convertible cash notes. The source also said that Google does not hold any special rights in the deals such as first position in cases such as acquisitions and other important decisions done by the companies they are sponsoring. However, they do have Google staffer advising the companies and startups that they are helping with their cash reserves with.
The funds for the startups are also said to be coming from Google, the internet company on its own, which are being generated by the M&A boss Don Harrison and his team. The funds are not being taken from GV or the Google Capital, which is a branch of the Google parent company, Alphabet, which usually backs bigger startups to Hello.
Reports indicate that the investments are for $10 million and below and are not of the same scale as those of Google’s investment in SpaceX Program run by Elon Musk, and the augmented reality whatsit Magic Leap.
The news go in tandem with reports that Google has always had an eye on keeping all its hands involved in the happenings of Silicon Valley and clearly they are trying their best to stay on top of everything.
