Google buys its protection for $625 million

On Monday, July 9th, Google officially announced that it signed a contract with Postini, the “global leader” of online security. In a press release concerning the matter, Google declared for the sum of $625 million, it will have control of Postini as a “wholly-owned subsidiary” and that the deal is “expected to close by the end of the third quarter 2007.”

Google Applications such as “Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Docs & Spreadsheets, and Personal Start Page” have become very popular among small businesses; Google provided a statistic indicating that nearly 1,000 small businesses register with these applications each day.

Google maintains that large businesses will likely be impressed with this acquisition because it will allow them to benefit from the innovative applications of Google and the assured security of Postini. The press release stated that among its many security features, “Postini solutions include Email Security, IM Security, Web Security, Message Archiving, Message Encryption, and Policy-enforced TLS.”

President and CEO of Postini, Quentin Gallivan, has described the deal as “an exciting milestone,” and Google appears to agree. As far as I’m concerned, this is another huge step forward for Google, leaving other search engines and Internet application providers in the dust.