Google is reportedly upping its efforts into the real estate market as it plans to “acquire one to two small real estate companies a month’. Sam Sebastian, Google’s director of local and business to business sector denied that Google are planning to buy Trulia – a widely speculated “rumor” - but did mention the fact that Google is looking at options in buying up smaller real estate companies.
Google have gradually been upping its effort in supplying information on the real estate front for some time and have lead many to suggest that Google is making efforts at becoming a “full-fledged real estate search engine in its own right” – as SELand puts it.
Back in October in 2008 Google allowed for people filter their search in Google Maps to include local real estate agents using the drop down menu. Since then 2009 saw some further changes; in July Google added to their real estate search functionality by allowing users to see more comprehensive lists of houses that are fed straight form the real estates site through their Google Base accounts. Then in October Google continued to make its real estate results more prominent by adding a real estate option to Google Maps.
"Place Pages" to be available in UK this year
November 2009 saw one of the biggest changes so far when Google rolled out individual “place pages” for every property that’s listed in Google Maps. This change – which is slated to be released in the UK later in 2010 - allow users to view property information, photos, map placement and street view images as well as other key information.
With the announcement that Google are looking to acquire small real estate agents this certainly means that Google are deadly serious about the real estate market. What this means for the future of real-estate as we know it remains to be seen…
January 20th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
I think that this is a good thing, the more google has its sights on the more we can see. People are dependent on google and often wont use any other resource, at least this way we miss out on less information.