These days, when I hear that Google has bought a company, I feel sorry for its founders, however rich they're becoming. Google just bought Jaiku for a rumored $12 million. Not bad for a service that's mostly a copycatan identical twin of Twitter, allowing users to broadcast short messages to friends by text message and IM. Sure, they got a nice payout. But my gut tells me that the price was dooming Jaiku to irrelevance. Google's track record of botched acquisitions — remember dMarc Broadcasting or Dodgeball, anyone? Didn't think so — just grows longer and longer. At YouTube, most of the pre-Google employees are resting and vesting, I hear — waiting for their stock-option packages to reach full value, and then plotting their escapes. If Jaiku's employees are students of history, one hopes they inked an agreement that allowed them an early exit in case things go sour. Evan Williams, who sold his previous company to Google, must be softly chuckling to himself.

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