Gree (Japanese company)

The company name GREE comes from a hypothesis, Six Degrees of Separation postulated by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1967. "Six degrees of separation" is a hypothesis that everyone is approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth. If a chain of "a friend of a friend" statements are made, on average, any two people in the world can be connected in six steps or fewer. The name symbolizes GREE's hope to "create and provide any new possibilities of the Internet" and to "create new forms of fun, convenience, and excitement."^[2]

In February, 2004, GREE alpha was released to the public by Yoshikazu Tanaka as a personal hobby. The following month, GREE alpha exceeded 10,000 users, which led to the formal establishment of GREE, Inc on December, 2004. Between 2006 and 2007, the company expanded its reach by launching official mobile services across major Japanese carriers, including KDDI, NTT Docomo, and Softbank. This rapid expansion of the platform accelerated GREE past 1 million users by March 2007. GREE went public on December 2008, listing on the market of the High-Growth and Emerging Stocks.

The platform showed increasing growth over the next 2 years, surpassing 10 million users in April 2009, and 20 million by June 2010. During the same month, GREE opened its platform to third-party developers, allowing third-party application on "GREE Platform." It also moved its headquarters to Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, and was listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The company began an international expansion starting in 2011, establishing GREE International, Inc. in the United States of America. They also announced a business collaboration with Tencent. GREE completed major acquisitions, purchasing the U.S. social gaming platform OpenFeint for $104 million in April 2011^[3], followed by their purchase of the mobile developer Funzio for $210 million.^[4]