Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that it has acquired Surbiton.com from digital media publisher 3 Radicals.
The purchase of Surbiton.com, is a key part of Google's strategy to provide a range of digital services dedicated to serving the local needs of consumers – from neigbourhood news through to discussion forums and event listings. Following the acquisition, Surbiton.com will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.
Commenting on the purchase Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google said: "I'm delighted that we have been able to secure this deal. Surbiton.com is a product that I have always admired. Surbiton.com's acknowledged strength in community forums complements the comprehensive search facilities provided by Google. It also supplements the information and services we deliver to advertisers through Google Adsense."
Antony Occident, Managing Director of 3 Radicals, said: "Surbiton.com is a long standing and successful product, with tremendously loyal users and a high reputation. During its 10 year history it has garnered numerous prestigious awards for the quality of its coverage. We believe that the positioning of Surbiton.com alongside Google will benefit the website and its users."
Polly Faenol, Editor of Surbiton.com, will be joining Google and is relishing the new opportunities: "It's exciting to be taking Surbiton.com forward within a group that is taking pioneering steps in online publishing. I'm impressed by the recent launch of Google Local and look forward to seeing how we can use this technology to the benefit of Surbiton.com users in the future."
Comments
is this a joke? Why on earth would Google be interested in purchasing a rarely updated local news site (most 'new's is copy/pasted from other sites anyway) with a dead forum populated by Daily Mail-reading whinging scumbags?
If anything this site contributes negatively to Surbiton (especially the forum where they'd have you believe the town is besieged by gun-wealding-feral-gay-immigrant rapists).
Surbiton is a fantastic place to live, let's have a site that does it justice.
Our developer has kindly spent some free time creating an alternative homepage: http://www.surbiton.com/hotspanners
Hopefully hotspanners will be pleased see the news is filtered to exclude crime, obituaries, protests and smells. Also we've removed the Worst from our Best / Worst rankings.
Enjoy :)
Please feel free to post positive news stories and comments to the forums.
Unfortunately, even with contributions from Google - see here for more details, Surbiton.com can't afford a team of reporters and we're entirely dependent on user submissions and news discovered on the internet. Sadly most news sites prefer headline-grabbing crime stories, which gives visitors to this site a very unbalanced image of Surbiton.
In view of this we ask users to make more use of our Submit News feature to post their own articles about local events and news happening in the neighbourhood.
The forums are unmoderated, and as a previous poster has mentioned, people are generally more motivated to post negative experiences.
I'll pipe up for the silent majority and say how much I appreciate the site.
Seconded! This is a good local resource, and every town should have one.
So what if it reports more bad news than good? I think that it is useful to know about these things. The point of the site should not be to advertise Surbiton as a nice place to live, but to inform local residents what is going on.
Most people who live in Surbiton appreciate that it is a great place to live (otherwise why pay to live here).
Thirded!
Yes, it's unbelievable - especially at this time of the year!!!
I am not sure what else you want out of a local website. It brings together a lot of the local news stories, and advertises upcoming events.
I agree that the forum is very negative and portrays the town in a less than favourable light, but this is the nature of these things. People will very rarely take the time to comment on something positive that has happened to them, but go straight to forums like this when something goes wrong.
Surbiton IS a fantastic place to live, and I don't think the views of a few doom-mongers on a website is going to change that.
Erm, did you notice the date of the post?
Congratulations Surbiton.com! I hope you're getting lots of money for it.
Thanks, it certainly made us smile. You can read more about the acquisition here:
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/google_surbiton.html
Surbiton.com webmaster
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