Showing posts with label acquisition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label acquisition. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Google Announces Waze Acquisition

waze_logo2
Google just officially confirmed in a blog post that it has acquired mapping company Waze with some big plans to integrate the Israel-based company’s traffic related features into Google Maps.

As for what specific traffic features you might see come to Google Maps, Google’s Vice President of Geo Brian McClendon notes “The Waze community and its dedicated team have created a great source of timely road corrections and updates.”

Google had been rumored several times in recent weeks to be acquiring the company with the latest reports claiming the deal would be somewhere in the $1B range.

It was previously revealed that Waze was one of many mapping companies providing data for Apple’s new in-house Maps apps in iOS 6 and Apple was at one point rumored to purchase the company.

Waze’s mapping app, currently available for both Android and iOS, is  a “community based mapping” solution that focuses on social elements and user reporting while collecting “real-time traffic & road info.” Waze maps include features for users to actively report events such as local traffic problems or gas prices and also offers Foursquare check-in integration.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Google Snags E-Mail Genius Sparrow


We've all dreamt of a better Android e-mail client, Google has announced today they have acquired Sparrow. Sparrow's been an iOS/OSX staple, and we can only hope it'll bring its talents to Android, along with Gmail at large. 

Sparrow writes:


We're excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired by Google!

We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience.

Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google.

We’d like to extend a special thanks to all of our users who have supported us, advised us, given us priceless feedback and allowed us to build a better mail application. While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users.

We had an amazing ride and can't thank you enough.

Full speed ahead!

Dom Leca
CEO
Sparrow

We also want to thank our advisors and investors — Loren Brichter, Dave Morin, John Maeda, Xavier Niel, Jérémie Berrebi — as well as our friends and family: Simon Istolainen, Jérémie Kanza, Sacha Cayre, Cedric Gepner, Laurent Merlinot, Didier Kuhn, Christophe Baillon, Laurent Cerveau, Christophe Giaume, Sebastien Maury, Manuel Colom, Bertrand Guiheneuf and all of you who have helped us along the way.
For all press inquiries, please email press@google.com.