I just got off the phone with the former CEO of @Last Software, Mark Sawyer (I'll have to get his new title with Google for the full report coming later today). He said that when AECnews.com first reported the SketchUp/Google acquisition rumor, there was no dialog about acquisition. "It wasn’t a misread, but a harbinger," Sawyer told me. "The rumor predated fact."
What spurred first the rumor, and then the reality, was the fact that the two development teams discovered a great synergy working together on the SketchUp plug-in for Google Earth. "People read the body language, so to speak," Sawyer said.
More later.
--RSN