Google agrees to acquire Panoramio, it’s the heading of the latest Panoramio’s official blog. Besides, you can get the first-look into Panoramio by reading my another post on this geographical photo sharing site. Maybe we are now wondering on the shopping spree of Google in the recent months, but don’t forget how Panoramio work hand-in-hand with the Google products, Google Maps and Google Earth. Panoramio was doing the first-part job by enables digital photographers to geo-locate, store and organize their photographs, and users will view those photographs in Google Earth, as mentioned in the official Google blog.

At the same time, if users don’t want to pass their photos and personal information to Google, they would be given a chance to opt-out of the transfer of their personal information if Panoramio were acquired, as listed in the frequently asked questions section. Nevertheless, the above planned acquisition did not surprised the market as the momentum around this acquisition and partnership concept was far long created since the first day Panoramio launched in the market. On the other side, does this planned acquisition sounds that building products around Google and expect Google to buy into the intended visions is a good product strategy?

eBay has announced that they have acquired StumbleUpon, a website that allowed users stumbling upon the new sites discovered on the web, for an aggregate transaction value of approximately $75 million, according to eBay’s press release. The acquisition would ensured that eBay has leverage on the segmented and demographically focused for as much as 2.3 million of users. Though I’m not sure how eBay will monetize the web community that StumbleUpon has accumulated for the past years, but we should not argue that process of new recommendations post on StumbleUpon is not just plain fun, sometimes it is mesmerizing. However, I still believe the strategic conundrum remained, particularly in view of its high cost of acquisition, i.e. $75 million.

Google Gears, a new release that currently in beta mode, first came courtesy of Google because of the Google Developer Day, as mentioned in Google’s official blog. It is an open source browser extension, enables not just our applications but everyone’s applications work offline. This product was an incremental technology, as Google Gears’ engineers said, “Gears is an incremental improvement to the web as it is today. It adds just enough to AJAX to make current web applications work offline.”

I believe this release was a move by Google aimed at finding new markets especially open source field among the underserved. It is a good product strategy, a good forward-looking strategy.

I just came cross an interesting article that entitled, “Mylivesearch aims for beta to better,” that caught the eyes of Google. My Live Search, indeed has been developed in the Down Under for the past eight (8) years and self-funded. According to the creator, Robert Gabriel said his search engine gives better, more relevant results than the search king because it is a truly “live” search, by means of a a small browser plug-in. Furthermore, My Live Search can also search the so-called “invisible web” of dynamically-generated web pages that search engines have trouble indexing, as quoted by him.

Though some said “Talk is Cheap,” but the reality is some talks are not cheap. but And I will reserve my viewpoint or any judgement until we all see this search engine goes live in June next month.

While MySpace, owned by Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corporation has acquired Photobucket and have been talked loudly across the blogosphere, included one of my posts, there was also a piece of good news that Photobucket has announced the confirmation of it.

Here’s what Photobucket has said about the deal (some excerpts):

Dear Photobucket Friends:

As you may have already heard, today Photobucket announced that it has accepted an offer to be acquired by Fox Interactive Media (FIM), a division of News Corporation. This is a really big piece of news for us at Photobucket.

First and foremost, we expect nothing to change in our day-to-day operations. After the transaction is closed and finalized, the plan is to operate Photobucket as an independent, standalone company within FIM. Click here to read more.

Google has acquired GreenBorder, a web security company that also based in Mountain View, California, where Google is also headquartered. GreenBorder is a startup that offers temporary, virtual sessions each time a computer users surfs the Web, then discards the resulting data once the user is finished surfing. And thus, insulate corporate networks so that malicious code hidden inside email, instant messages or websites is automatically detected and contained. In technological setting, GreenBorder has a strong presence in web security for corporate world by using its own “virtualization” technology, according to Reuters. The beauty of their Pro software is it does not require to be updated, though initially as a sandbox for Internet Explorer, but now the software also supports Firefox. More details about their features can be found on this post.

Moreover, I embeded a video about the brief overview of GreenBorder that I found on YouTube in the below:

I just testing my blog on great firewall of china and found out that this blog, Tag Edge has been banned in China.

Update: Tangos of China Web2.0 Review has pointed out TagEdge wasn’t banned in China, as listed in the comment. Tangos, thanks for the information.

Long Tail coiner Chris Anderson is launching his new startup with two partners on this coming June 1, as confirmed in his own blog. The new startup is called BookTour.com. It is a self-funded venture and as you visit this site, nothing but the logo appeared on its landing page. I guess this will be some sort a platform for the video book tour and author or book news network.