Google quarterly report reveals $151M Zagat purchase, 54 other buys. Google paid $151 million in cash for restaurant review company Zagat, only one of the 54 acquisitions the company made in the first nine months of 2011. The numbers were revealed in a quarterly report submitted by the company to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In order to become more vertical, Google snaps up relevant companies around it, often supplementing programs or products already in the Google roster. Most recently, Google purchased German site DailyDeal for its Google Offers program, along with Motorola for its Android and mobile programs.
The company acquired Zagat in September, immediately integrating assets from the company into Google Maps to enhance reviews on its business pages. At the time of the announcement, terms were not disclosed. According to the quarterly report, DailyDeal was purchased for $114 million in mid September. Motorola was picked up for approximately $12.5 billion in an obvious effort to introduce hardware to the Android system. Google Acquires Zagat. Google has placed one of its biggest bets on location to date, acquiring local reviews giant Zagat. Writing on the company’s official blog, Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of Local, Maps and Location Services, wrote, “Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering — delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world.”
Zagat is far cry from the startups typically mentioned in the location space. The company was founded 32 years ago and started as a printed guide to restaurants, with "Zagat Ratings" becoming an industry standard. More recently, however, Zagat has reinvented itself on the web and with mobile apps, bringing it into competition with the likes of Foursquare and Yelp. Location has been a tough nut for Google to crack. S&P Downgrades Google Stock Rating To "Sell" Equity analysts at Standard & Poor's downgraded Google's stock rating from "buy" to "sell" Tuesday, following the search giant's decision to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.
In a statement on the rating reversal, S&P equity analyst Scott Kessler said that the Motorola purchase puts Google at risk. S&P does not believe Motorola's patent portfolio will ease Google's patent woes. Google shares closed at $539 Tuesday, dropping 3.3%. "After further consideration of GOOG’s plans announced yesterday to purchase Motorola Mobility (MMI 38, Hold), we see greater risk to the company and stock. We expect the transaction to be consummated next year, but later than early ’12, which GOOG indicated. Moreover, despite MMI’s extensive and valuable patent portfolio, we are not sure it will protect Android from IP issues.
Google's decision to purchase Motorola was unexpected, leading many to speculate over the company's real intentions. [via WSJ] The 10 Most Expensive Google Acquisitions. Guess who else wanted to buy Motorola? Google may not have had much of a choice when it came to buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. If it didn’t, someone else would have and that would have put the company in an even bigger patent hole.
Our sources say that Motorola was in acquisition talks with several parties, including Microsoft for quite some time. Microsoft was interested in acquiring Motorola’s patent portfolio that would have allowed it to torpedo Android even further. The possibility of that deal brought Google to the negotiation table, resulting in the blockbuster sale. Motorola found a Google deal more digestible because Microsoft had no interest in running a hardware business and was essentially interested in Motorola’s vast collection of patents. The high-level talks between Google and Motorola started about five weeks ago. My view is that while Google might have won the battle, in the long run it has put the Android ecosystem at risk.
LARRY PAGE: This Is Why We're Spending $12.5 Billion On Motorola. Google's Motorola deal: What exactly is Google buying? - TNW Google. As we reported earlier, in a surprise move today, Google has announced its intention to purchase Motorola Mobility, the handset manufacturing side of Motorola’s business. So, what is Motorola Mobility and what does the acquisition give Google? Following several years of huge losses and significant drops in market share, the Mobile Devices division of Motorola was spun out of Motorola as a separate company in January this year. Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. has of late focused its mobile handset business exclusively on the Android market. With the deal, Motorola will continue to operate as a separate business, but what exactly is Google buying? Mobile devices Motorola Mobility produces a range of Android-powered handsets including the high-end Droid and ATRIX brands and cheaper handsets like the Citrus and Flipout.
Set-top boxes – ideal for Google TV Other hardware Motorola Mobility also produces broadband routers, networking equipment and hardware for digital security. Google's Strategic Mistakes Drove Motorola Buy - Horace Dediu. By Horace Dediu | 9:00 AM August 16, 2011 Google’s $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility has set the technology and investing worlds aflutter, with much of the commentary positioning it as a play by Google for Motorola’s strong IP portfolio. But a single point of focus is incorrect and misses a bigger point: The MMI purchase is the result of Google’s miscalculations about the way value is captured in mobile computing. These strategic missteps placed Google in a position of weakness and forced it into a costly and desperate move.
To understand why that’s the situation Google is in, first we should look at the company’s mobile Android software in the context of Google’s product portfolio. There’s a great consistency with Google’s products: they are services “in the cloud.” All except for one: Android. However, lately, cracks began to appear in the strategy. All of these problems are a direct result of the approach Google chose with its big bet on Android. Google & Motorola Mobility: The What’s It All Mean Edition. What a way to start the week. The company that once said it would never build its own mobile phones, Google, wants to buy mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility.
The technosphere has gone into 5G coverage over the news. Here’s what I’ve been finding interesting and some thoughts. Patent Protection A big part of this is about patents. You might recall two weeks ago that Google make a big stink that Microsoft and Apple were, in Google’s view, trying to chop off Android’s big head with a patent guillotine.
Picking up Motorola means that Google picks up Motorola’s patents, as Google highlighted in its blog post today: Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies. By the way, Samsung has 37,000 mobile patents, followed by LG with 31,000, then Motorola, according to a Piper Jaffray chart that eWeek has here. Ah, yes, Nokia. The Google/Motorola deal explained with lightsabers, ponies (video) The big news that Google aims to acquire Motorola Mobility was inescapable yesterday, but after a while all the analysis and speculation got difficult to wade through. Leave it up to Taiwan’s Next Media Animation to cut through the crud and deliver the real meat of the news in a short video (below).
And, yes, it does include a lightsaber-wielding Darth Steve Jobs and the Google co-founders riding on a pony. (Astute readers will remember Darth Steve Jobs from Next Media’s Antennagate video last year.) While undeniably zany, the video still manages to cover the broad points raised by the Google/Motorola deal. I just hope Next Media will be able to further illustrate the adventures of Darth Steve Jobs with future videos and that the Google guys will have more than a bumbling droid to help protect them. Google / Motorola : acte manqué…
« People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware » (Les gens réellement sérieux en matière de logiciel devraient faire leur propre matériel). Il est clair, à l’annonce du rachat de Motorola Mobility par Google pour le montant pharaonique de 12,5 milliards de dollars, que Larry Page et Sergueï Brin ont décidé de faire leur miel de l’aphorisme d’Alan Kay lors de sa conférence de juillet 1982 au séminaire « Creative Think ». Celle-ci, comme toute sa conférence, d’ailleurs, avait si fortement impressionné Andrew Hertzfield – et à sa suite toute l’équipe qui travaillait sur le projet Macintosh – que Steve Jobs la prit pour exergue lors du lancement de l’iPhone, le 9 janvier 2007, en même temps qu’il annonçait les ambitions d’Apple sur le marché de l’électronique grand-public. Un drôle de contre-pied Ce faisant, les 2 petits génies ont oublié deux règles fondamentales dont Steve Jobs lui-même a pu expérimenter les conséquences à son retour fin 1996 : RoughlyDrafted.
Google Buys Motorola. Google announced Monday morning that it will acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Motorola is one of 39 manufacturers of handsets that use Google's Android operating system. Buying a hardware company is an unusual move for Google. The acquisition, Google said in a statement, "will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem. " SEE ALSO: Nokia & RIM Shares Jump Following Google’s Motorola Mobility Acquisition Google CEO Larry Page expanded on what that might mean in a blog post. SEE ALSO: Why the Google-Motorola Deal Is About More Than Mobile Phones "The U.S. SEE ALSO: The History of Android [INFOGRAPHIC] Android will continue to be an open platform, and Motorola will continue to be run as a separate business, Page added. Google buys UK comparison website BeatThatQuote.com for £37.7 million. Google has bought UK price comparison website BeatThatQuote.com, acquiring the web property for £37.7 million earlier today.
John Paleomylites, Managing Director of the newly acquired company, took to the website to announce the deal, posting: BeatThatQuote.com was sold to Google for GBP37.7 million. We think this deal is a tremendous opportunity for our company to develop new and innovative options for personal finance in the UK.Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google. We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. A bit of backstory on the BeatThatQuote; the company helps its website visitors search, compare and apply for lower rates and cheaper prices on a different array of products including financial, insurance, legal services, utilities and shopping. BeatThatQuote.com - The UK's Fastest Growing Price Comparison Site. Pourquoi (et combien) Google veut racheter Groupon. Google proposerait désormais entre 5 et 6 milliards de dollars pour racheter le site d'achat social.
Pourquoi semble-t-il prêt à tout ? Les rumeurs d'acquisition de Groupon.com par Google s'intensifient. Alors qu'un prix d'achat de 2,5 milliards de dollars avait initialement été évoqué, le blog "All Things Digital" du "Wall Street Journal" affirme désormais que le géant du Web propose au site de shopping social 5,3 milliards de dollars auxquels s'ajoute une prime d'earnout de 700 millions de dollars. Ce qui ferait de cette acquisition la plus importante jamais conclue par Google, devant celles de Doubleclick à 3,1 milliards de dollars et bien sûr de Youtube à 1,65 milliard. Pourquoi Google est-il prêt à dépenser autant pour ce site, qui commercialise des coupons de réduction à valoir localement sur des offres de loisirs ? Groupon est le leader du secteur marchand enregistrant la plus forte croissance sur Internet.
C'est d'abord cette position que Google semble prêt à payer au prix fort. Que va faire Google de ses 49 acquisitions de 2010 ?