Tag Archives: Google
The Nest Acquisition
Last week saw one of the largest venture-backed private company acquisitions in recent memory, when Google purchased smart thermostat and smoke detector maker Nest Labs for $3.2 billion. As has been widely reported, Nest boasts a rockstar team of more than 300 employees, led by former iPod guru Tony Fadell. The company is estimated to […]
Map-based intelligence for everyone!
Last week, Google launched Maps Engine Pro, a cloud-based software tool designed to let businesses organize and visualize geo-spatial data. Priced at $5 per month per user (there is also a free tier for businesses with limited usage levels), this tool allows small and medium sized businesses to create internal- and external-facing maps that utilize […]
Mammoth Round for Uber
Uber, a three year old start-up that has created a marketplace for car-service booking, last week announced a mammoth fundraising round of $361 million, at a valuation of approx. $3.5 billion. Leading the round was Google Ventures with $258 million, the other notable new investor being TPG with $88 million. Uber is expected to bring […]
Mobile advertising: A tough market?
Another mobile advertising acquisition is in the books – last week, mobile display ad network Millennial Media acquired competitor Jumptap for approx. $225 million in an all-stock transaction. The combination of Millennial and Jumptap owned approximately 28.7% of the United States third-party mobile display advertising market and had approximately $240 million in total revenues during […]
Chromecast, from Google
So the $35 Chromecast is in the market now, having been released last week. Chromecast is a small form-factor dongle that can be directly connected to the HDMI port on a TV and which can stream content over Wi-Fi from any of our mobile devices as well as from Google Chrome browsers on PCs. Functionally […]
Waze of the Start-up Nation!
GPS-based navigation app startup Waze was acquired last week by Google for a price just north of $1 billion. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Israel, Waze had previously raised approximately $67 million in venture capital from investors based in Israel and the Silicon Valley. The startup has almost 50 million users that contribute information […]