A new
$5.75 million investment from Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and others in online ad startup Pixazza Inc. could very well be an entree for the search giant's eventual acquisition of the young company.
Pixazza's technology enables Web publishers to insert little tags into pictures on their sites. When users roll over the tags, a window pops open with details on the product in the picture, prices and links to different retailers that offer the product.
As BusinessWeek's Tech Beat blog
points out, the startup is an ad network similar to Google's AdSense technology, which serves text and display ads related to the content on the page being viewed. Pixazza's technology arguably would dovetail well with Google's.
"Pixazza hopes to do for images what Google's AdSense did for Web pages," Pixazza CEO Bob Lisbonne said in a press release.
Other investors in Pixazza's
Series A include August Capital and CMEA Capital. It has also raised funding from Foundation Capital, angel
investor Ron Conway, former eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) chief operating officer Maynard Webb and
Facebook Inc. chief financial officer Gideon Yu.
The company was founded last year and is run by a group of Netscape veterans.
- Olaf de Senerpont Domis
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