Google Ventures launched in 2009 with the goal of “discovering and growing great companies,” and has barley looked back. Currently, Google’s VC arm has over 150 companies under its belt. These range across a variety of fields like mobile, gaming, energy, and life sciences – still all territory you would expect Google itself to cover.

The investing team consists of: Bill Maris, David Krane, Joe Kraus , Karim Faris, Kevin Rose, Krishna Yeshwant, Rich Miner, Wesley Chan, Anish Acharya, Andy Wheeler, Anthony Philippakis, Blake Byers, Chris Hutchins, Lindsay Ullman, Luis Garcia, and Scott Davis.

Google Ventures recently shared this year in review infographic and video, which will give you an idea of where it stands:

[via reddit]

“We launched Twitch a little over a year ago, and already we have more than 20 million unique viewers per month,” said Emmett Shear, CEO of Twitch. “We have also partnered with more than 2,000 incredible broadcasters and have integrated our product with leading game publishers. “I’m very proud of our accomplishments, but there’s so much more to do. Our current team has put us at the forefront of the live video game streaming movement, and we can now invest aggressively to support our growing community with new ways to stream, watch, and chat.”

The growth of Twitch parallels the growth of the eSports market in general. Back in April Twitch partnered with CBS Interactive and Major League Gaming to provide eSports coverage. Over the past two years, games such as StarCraft II and League of Legends have garnered a large community of gamers willing to watch professionals play them. Riot Games, the developer behind League of Legends, announced last month that it will establish a professional eSports league for its game.

“Twitch is exactly the kind of company that we seek for investment,” said Ethan Kurzweil, vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners. “Twitch is not just a game changer: they created the game and are creating new experiences for their community. We’re looking forward to them accelerating their lead, and continuing to change the rules as they go.”

Co-founder and general partner Ben Horowitz explains, “Fund III is all about extending our capabilities to more disruptors and pioneers. We’re remaking the modern venture capital firm, and entrepreneurs are responding to our unique approach.”

The firm has raised $2.7 billion since its founding in June 2009. Its portfolio consists of 90 tech companies. These include Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Groupon, Digg, Instagram, Skype, Zynga, Pinterest, and Airbnb, to name a few.

The new funding should help aid some more future household names.

“Software is the catalyst that will remake entire industries during the next decade,” says co-founder and general partner Marc Andreessen. “We are single-mindedly focused on partnering with the best innovators pursuing the biggest markets.”

Horowitz wrote a lengthy blog post about not only the funding, but really history of the firm and an essay about its philosophies. For example, he writes:

Marc and I share a simple belief that became the basis for our new venture capital firm: in general, founding CEOs perform better than professional CEOs over the long term, and a venture capital firm that enables founding CEOs to succeed would help build the best companies and yield superior investment returns.

The firm says Fund III is available to be deployed immediately.

Update 2: Peter Kafka at AllThingsD is reporting that Arrington is indeed an AOL employee, though he no longer works for AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group. He writes: “That’s consistent with what the company said yesterday, but contradicts what AOL HuffingtonPost spokesman Mario Ruiz told the Business Insider this morning. But since Sullivan reports directly to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, we’ll take her word on this.”

Here’s the TechCrunch post about the whole thing, finally. Written by Paul Carr.

Reports came out from Fortune and the New York Times that famed blogger and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is launching a new venture fund to invest in early-stage startups.

According to Fortune, his partner is Patrick Gallagher of VantagePoint Venture and the goal is to raise about $20 million.

While the NYT reported that Arrington “will take a backseat role at TechCrunch, which is hiring a new managing editor,” and that “He will continue to report to Arianna Huffington, who runs AOL’s media properties,” Henry Blodget is reporting that Huffington said in an email that Arrington isn’t being paid by TechCrunch, won’t report to TechCrunch editors and won’t export to Huffington or other AOL Huffington Post Media Group Personnel.

Arrington himself has been pretty quiet about his plans. His tweets since the news came out have consisted of:

There has been plenty of outside chatter, however. Here are some tweets from others:

Jeff Jarvis lists “a few things to keep in mind” regarding Arrington in a Google+ post:

• Arrington started as a VC who happened to write a blog to keep track of companies he was interested in for investment. It turned into a media property by accident (but with much hard and purposeful work).
• Arrington has long rejected the title “journalist.” At Disrupt, I tried to get him to take on the uniform. He adamantly would not.
• NYTimesCo also invests in startups (including one where I am a partner, Daylife) and the NYTimes covers startups. NYTimes lab also created a startup with Betaworks (News.me). It, too, is in the business of startups.
• One difference: Arrington’s fund accepted capital from other VCs’ funds. An added layer of complexity, to be sure.

Robert Scoble says, “One thing, entrepreneurs will have a tough time with: He can be tough to work with if you aren’t very adept at PR and don’t know how to handle his personality. Getting questioned by him isn’t something that will be fun, either in a board meeting, or in public on a blog.”

That personality has been on public display in past Tech Crunch posts and tweetrs, where he has had plenty of “blog wars” for lack of a better term with other AOL staff (namely Engadget).

Swisher also had a whole lot more to say about the whole thing.

Note: The screenshot with the broken image on Arrington’s bio is real. Note 2: It’s not broken anymore. Probably meaningless, but still seems appropriate enough for a screenshot.

Andreessen serves on the boards of both eBay and Facebook, and is a chairman of the board of Ning, which he also co-founded. His biggest claim to fame was co-founding Netscape.

Horowitz also has background with Netscape. There he ran several product divisions. He co-founded LoudCloud with Andreessen. This became Opsware, which was later acquired by HP. Horowitz served as vice president and general manager of HP’s Business Technology Organization Unit.

The new firm will focus on investments within the range of $50 thousand to $50 million. The duo also announced its first round of funding at $300 million aimed at entrepreneurs, products, and companies in the tech industry.

"Innovation is thriving despite the current economic climate," says Andreessen. "Ben and I are huge supporters of entrepreneurs and want to help turn today’s sparks of brilliance into the next big thing."

"We see venture investing as a company-specific exercise," says Horowitz. "Therefore, we are looking for the best entrepreneurs and companies regardless of stage."

Andreesen outlines some things they are looking for out of entrepreneurs and companies on his blog. They want motivated entrepreneurs, technical founders, founders that intend to be CEOs, and founders that understand their products.

The firm is looking to invest in categories like consumer Internet, business Internet, mobile software/services, software-powered consumer electronics, infrastructure and apps software, networking, storage, and databases.

The firm is NOT looking to invest in "clean", "green", energy, transportation, life sciences (biotech, drug design, medical devices), nanotech, movie production companies, consumer retail, electric cars, rocket ships, space elevators.

"Over 200 million people of every age, shape, size, & color are now using Facebook," says founder fund startup investor Dave McClure.  "Every month more than 70% of those folks use Facebook apps. Over 800 third-party apps have 100,000 or more monthly active users (MAUs)." 

Developers are making good money from apps. And Facebook is offering opportunities for more of them to do so.

"The 2009 fbFund funding cycle will include a new Incubator Program, offering exclusive mentoring from VCs and other prominent developers and entrepreneurs working on Facebook Platform," a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews.

With the program, Facebook Platform developers and entrepreneurs can:

- Receive up to $100,000 in seed investment from fbFund

- Participate in an incubator program held mid-June to late August in Silicon Valley.
"During the program teams will connect with Facebook engineers and executives, along with successful entrepreneurs, angel investors, and venture capitalists who can provide real-world advice, insight and perspectives to help the teams build successful startups," the spokesperson says.

In addition to the Incubator Program, Facebook has also announced the fbFund Developer Advisory Council.

"Needless to say, we’re just getting this party started," says McClure. "Facebook apps are still growing like crazy, and Facebook Connect is opening up tremendous new opportunities for sharing and distribution on both the webtop and the iPhone.  We have a pocketful of cash to put to work on people and startups who are ready to make social applications and experiences explode across the web and mobile devices."

Members of the Advisory Council will participate in the Incubator Program as Mentors with all fbFund 2009 startups.

If you are unfamiliar with SynthaSite, it’s a do-it-yourself website creation tool with free hosting that lets users utilize drag and drop technology to easily create eCommerce sites powered by PayPal. Tools like this are useful for businesses looking to get online without a lot of technical know-how.

"In a recession with VC funding down 30% in Q408 and tech recording the lowest investment since ‘98, SynthaSite’s initial investors have buttressed its original $5m series A round, demonstrating their commitment to exponentially grow SynthaSite’s 1 million user base," a representative for SynthaSite tells WebProNews.

“We believe in providing the best possible experience for everyday people building Web sites. On top of that foundation, we have built a very scalable business model focused on generating revenue via value added services and partner relationships. Reinet shares our vision and we appreciate their strong support,” says SynthaSite CEO Vinny Lingham.

SynthaSite has recently launched a number of new features including an enhanced user interface, 60,000+ widgets, domain registration, shopping cart features and a blogging platform. Reinet’s executive Chairman Johann Rupert thinks SynthaSite is maturing according to plan.

Event Fee: Free
Web site: http://web.meetup.com/49/
Event date: Tuesday February 19, 2008 @ 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Event location: Menlo Park, CA

Description: We are thrilled to present a very special group from NASA Ames Research Center – World Wind! Our Meetup group is about sharing, teaching, learning, and networking around current and future web-based geospatial and social networking technology.

You belong if you are an entrepreneur, VC, developer, social-networker, programmer, visionary, geographer, geologist, explorer, Internet-user, voyeur, or anyone else interested in Web 2.0 mapping and social networks. We welcome all and exclude no one.

The format of this Meetup is as follows: introductions, discussion of current events or current technology as it relates to web 2.0 mapping and social networks, presentation(s), 60-second audience announcements, and of course, networking.

Comments

To show a fragmented and partial timeline, this comes after the announcement that an Indian version of YouTube would launch, the designation of Orkut as an Indian “youth icon,” and a companywide celebration of India’s 60th year of independence.  The most relevant story occurred in July, though, when Google joined the Band of Angels.

That organization helped bring Google closer to startups in India.  The Indian Angel Network and Ventureast TeNet Fund II, with which the search giant is now becoming involved, should do something similar.  And this seems like a very good idea.

Brian White writes, “[J]ust like innovation hotbed Israel, India is set to churn out just as many world-changing innovations as any other country in existence if the support tools and monetary infrastructure are in place to foster that type of environment.  Google’s ability to seek out funding opportunities for unique creations is unique in and of itself.  It will probably want to buy those creations once a workable business product or service is available.”

Given Google’s relationship with India, that’s not likely to be a problem.