Rumor has it Google may be looking to acquire Plaxo for roughly $200 million. Plaxo has a tool to manage contacts and users' email address books. But the company’s user acquisition strategy (Read SPAM) has only succeeded to alienated many would-be users. Although Plaxo has tried to clean up its reputation by reinventing itself as a social network with the launch of Pulse last summer. Plaxo still has a largely negative reputation among many people.
Google would likely integrate Plaxo functionality into its Docs suite of applications aimed at enterprise users. While Pulse could be joined with Orkut or become the backbone of a new, expanded Google Profiles and would integrated with Google's OpenSocial platform well.
Can Google save this technology company by acquiring it? Will the Google name bring it any closer to being ‘trusted’ by users?
