Google has announcedGoogle Ventures, a venture capital fund that “seeks to discover and grow great companies” in a “broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech and health care.”
The fund has two managing partners: Bill Maris, perhaps best known in tech circles for founding Web hosting company Burlee.com, and Rich Miner, co-founder of mobile platform Android.
As far as the size of the fund goes, actual amounts aren’t disclosed; however, the official site claims that the fund is “able to invest amounts ranging from seed funding to tens of millions of dollars.” In other words, anything goes, and Google probably won’t be cheap if they see a good opportunity. On the other hand, Google has always been somewhat careful, acquisition-wise, so don’t expect Google Ventures to be burning money; as they say, their goal is to “build great companies” but also to generate “long term financial return.”
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