14 DAY TRIAL // Rumors of Google acquisitions are flying around at an incredible pace these last few days and a couple of companies are said to be of interest to the search giant. The document collaboration services DocVerse is apparently being courted for about $25 million. Another possible acquisition comes in the form of Trulia, the real estate search engine, which is said to fetch $200 million, maybe even more. On the other hand, the rumored Yelp deal is now said to be dead as the startup's CEO is now walking away despite some pretty late-stage talks.
Google has just acquired Appjet, the startup behind EtherPad, a real-time document collaboration tool similar to DocVerse. Google though will pretty much kill off the project, which has now been open-sourced, and the team behind it will go on to work on Google Wave. If DocVerse gets bought, it will be for the product itself, which enables users to collaborate on Microsoft Office documents, which Google wants to use against the threat of Microsoft's own online collaboration suite launching soon.
In the real estate market, things are moving forward fast online and Google is certainly interested. It has introduced a couple of features for Google Maps and a number of tools dedicated to real estate listings, search and related services, but it could take a much more decisive step by acquiring Trulia, one of the big players in the real-estate search market. It's an important and potentially very lucrative market for Google, so it's willing to pour $200 million into the acquisition.
Finally, what looked like pretty solid deal is now apparently over as Yelp walks away from the acquisition talks. Much of the details had been settled on, so this sudden change of heart indicates some sort of outside influence from a major player like Microsoft or Apple. There isn't a better offer for the company, though so it looks like it may be some sort of partnership and not another sale.