Today Google the announce the acquisition Zillow, a real estate search engine, at the Realtors Conference and Expo in Las Vegas, called NAR.
 
Zillow.com, which was founded in early 2005 by Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, is an online real estate service dedicated to helping users to get an edge in real estate by providing valuable tools and information. Back than both founders were fresh from the success of bringing travel to the Internet at Expedia.com. While brainstorming ideas for their next business venture, they were drawn to the idea of real estate. Rich had actually started obsessing about bringing real estate online as early as 1989 when his mom decided to become a real estate agent after she packed her last child off to college. He even wrote a plan for a consumer real estate service, but the idea was shelved in favor of the dreaded "steady job."
 
The news did not come from Google nor the Zillow.com website. There only is a video from the Business Technology & Information Systems Forum, with the title: "Are You Ready For The Future?" In the videos you can see Richard Barton, Saul Klein (from Internet Crusade), Justin McCarthy (Google), Greg Swann (BloodHoundRealty) and Joel Burslem (Inman News). Google and Zillow discuss how they plan to eliminate the MLS system.
 
Interesting fact: Vanessa Fox, who helped to launch and improve the Google webmaster console, quite Google in june this year to work for Zillow.com. What a coincidence.