Google has just loosened their purse strings to pick up yet another company, where this particular entity is known as Polar. What does Polar do? They happen to be a mobile and desktop polling company, and apparently the reason behind the purchase of Polar is to strengthen their cause when it comes to user engagement among publishers as well as brands with their users. Employees of Polar will be moving to the Google office, and that looks as though it is going to be the only “disruption” that will happen, especially when you consider how their work will continue as usual. The main objective of Polar is to help increase user engagement on Google’s social media platform, or perhaps to look for a solution when it comes to assisting brands which rely on social networks to market themselves better when online.
Google’s social network Google+ has failed to catch Facebook, but the Web giant has not given up on the business entirely. Google has paid an undisclosed sum to acquire Polar, a startup whose technology is used to poll mobile-device users for their opinions. The deal brings founder and mobile design expert Luke Wroblewski and a handful of employees to Google+. Polar, which started almost two years ago, served more than half a billion polls in the past eight months and had 1.1 million unique voters in September, Wroblewski said in a blog announcing the Google deal. Polar provides polling to other companies and mobile apps, but Polar will be shutting down support at the end of this year. Wroblewski is well-known in the mobile industry as the author of the book Mobile First, which argues that websites and applications should be designed for smartphones and other mobile devices first, rather than the Web and desktop computers. At Google+, Wroblewski and the Polar team will work on making the social network easier to use on mobile devices, Dave Besbris, head of Google+, said. Besbris took over Google+ in April from Vic Gundotra, who left after struggling to increase usage and engagement on the social network enough to keep up with Facebook. The small acqui-hire suggests Google hasn’t given up on its social network, but hardly demonstrates Google+ is receiving the level of focus it once did. Some top Google+ employees have left recently, including three members of its design team, Fred Gilbert, Jonathan Terleski who now work at YouTube, and Brynn Evans, who works in Google’s Android division.
