This morning, the official SketchUp blog announced that Trimble had reached an agreement to purchase SketchUp from Google.
Who?
Trimble is a GPS-centric company -- says so in its company history. I'm quite concerned.
Even though the same team dating back to @Last remains, everyone has seen what happened to SU when Google bought it: Explosion of popularity, support and growth of major features, while maintaining the free version.
With ownership changing hands, the first question that comes to mind is: Does Trimble (TRMB) -- whose cash reserves has shrunk each of the last three years, whose P/E ratio is 3x larger than El Goog's, whose EPS is 1/30th that of El Goog's, whose profit margins is about a third that of El Goog's -- have the capacity to maintain what Google has done with the platform, and to top it off, improve SketchUp?
Surely the team was already deep into development of version 9, so it seems unlikely that the software will suffer in the next generation, but after that?
One does get the sense that Trimble and the SU team are looking to integrate stronger BIM capabilities into SU, so that may be a huge plus. If SU Pro with its LayOut software were improved further, it could replace most CAD software.
Fingers crossed and hope for the best, but deeply concerned.
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