Google SketchUp and Team Being Acquired by Trimble

Is this a first for google? I don't think I've ever heard of them selling a product/team to another company before. If not a first, certainly a rarity.

I have worked with a Trimble distributor for many years, and find this acquisition interesting. Over the last few years Trimble, traditionally a hardware company, has been acquiring various software companies. Internally, they are developing a virtual jobsite platform and I can see SketchUp fitting in with their other BIM technologies. Saying that though, I think the real motivation here is a talent acquisition.

Thank God.<p>Sketchup development has been neglible since Google acquired the company years ago. Aside from adding a kludged presentation capability to the "Pro" version there hasn't been a significant improvement to the core product in years (and I suspect that the presentation capabilities were in process at acquisition).

SketchUp is such a great tool. I use it for - furniture design! There's a healthy community of furniture design geeks out there.<p>Sadly, I can't see much synergy between GPS hardware and furniture design. I wish the acquirer was a CAD/design company. Hope we don't lose a great resource.

This is definitely a good move by Google to Shed some weight and let a promising product keep flourishing. I'm impressed.<p>Does anyone have an estimate on the price/term of this deal?

Any armchair CEOs have suggestions for other Google products that should be sold or spun out?<p>Wikipedia has an interesting list of discontinued Google products. There might be some interesting product ideas that didn't work at Google scale, but might still be worthwhile for a smaller company.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...</a>

SketchUp was the basis for Google's Boulder office, which has since grown a <i>lot</i>. I wonder if they'll move out and where.

I wonder how many people are left at SketchUp from the original company, before it was acquired by Google.<p>I bet they would have some interesting stories to tell, after going through a Google acquisition and now being sold by Googl

I am really worried... getting people to trust the capabilities of Sketchup was really easy mainly to the Google brand. Now I really hope that Trimble can convince me. Long time Sketchup user here, since Sketchup 2, good @Last days.

<a href="http://www.pointclouds.org/blog/trcs/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pointclouds.org/blog/trcs/</a><p>Trimble is sponsoring development of several projects in different research areas involving 3D perception, as part of the second PCL code sprint.<p>PCL is the Point Cloud Library from Willowgarage that also created ROS, PR2 and Turtlebot. These guys are surely trying to do some good stuff for 3D. Hope the sketchup community benefits from this acquisition

This is an interesting development. I have a lot of colleagues in the architecture industry who are heavily dependant on SketchUp for early-stage conceptual work. I wonder if Trimble, a company with focus on hardware and BIM will push sketchup away from its easy to use, conceptual design origins.

Neat idea, instead of discontinuing the product. Too bad they didn't have the foresight to do this with Dodgeball.

Aside from SketchUp, anyone know what other projects/products are being worked on at the Boulder Google office?

This is strange. Can someone explain how this would work for Google or why it would be a good move?

Interesting. As a long time AutoCAD and SolidWorks user I have never thought of Trimble as a 3D CAD company. Not even a software company. One has to wonder if SketchUp could have found a better home than Trimble.<p>I can see an established 3D CAD company really enhancing it as a potential bridge onto their bigger tools and providing more interoperability with other platforms. I can't justify buying a license of SolidWorks for my kid's PC but if SketchUp were a SW product with a ramp up to SW I would definitely consider it and even pay for it.<p>Time will tell.

I really really hope they keep develop sketch up and keep it at par with google's simplicity and speed and price. One more down.