On2 Shareholders Finally Agree To Google Merger: Now What?

After months of drama and debate over the future of On2, the company announced late yesterday that shareholders have agreed to the $130M+ merger with Google. With the deal expected to close this week, it won’t be long before things should start to get interesting. While we’ve all spent the last few months debating, wondering and guessing what Google plans to do with On2, with the deal now done, pretty soon we’re going to find out.

For all the talk and speculation that someone other than Google would be interested in buying On2, clearly that was not the case. The same holds true for the speculation by some that a company like Microsoft would step in last minute to prevent the sale or that another bidder would come in if shareholders rejected the Google deal. In the end, with On2’s revenue growth stalled and the company running short on cash, they really didn’t have many options in the market. While plenty of On2 shareholders I spoke to last night are still mad at the deal and didn’t vote in favor of it, the deal will be a good one for On2’s technology which will now get a new home at Google.

While Google did get the majority of votes to get the deal done, I still don’t think the majority of shareholders were in favor of it. What I should have said was that the vote required to approve the merger was the affirmative vote of a majority of On2’s outstanding shares and not a majority of the shares voting. But at this point, none of that really matters and On2’s technology will now move on to bigger and better things. What exactly we don’t know, but I suspect we’ll all find out very shortly.