On June 7, Beijing time, Google announced that it had acquired data analysis company Looker for US$2.6 billion and merged the company into Google cloud.
Earlier this year, Google Cloud Computing Director Thomas Kurian approached data analysis company Looker about a potential cooperation. Afterwards, Looker sought advice from a familiar face in Silicon Valley: Frank Quattrone.
People familiar with the matter said that Quattrone's investment bank Qatalyst Partners searched for potential bidders and gained interest from companies such as Microsoft and Amazon. These people familiar with the matter said that Google is actively seeking to acquire Looker, and soon finalized a $2.6 billion acquisition offer. Since the negotiations were conducted in private, the media are not aware of the specific details.
Kurian once led a team of 35,000 people at Oracle. He has publicly stated that he will quickly recruit corporate sales personnel to respond to changes in the cloud computing field, but this is since he took over as the head of Google Cloud Computing in November last year. The first iconic move. Looker is the Google acquisition of 21-year-old third-largest acquisition , second only to Motorola and Nest , is by far the largest cloud business acquisitions.
It is understood that many companies rely on Looker's business intelligence software to understand and visualize large amounts of complex data, from marketing to financial planning.
Google paid a huge price for this transaction. According to a report by Canaccord Genuity, Looker's revenue this year will be between 140 million and 180 million US dollars. The high-end market has an expected P/E ratio of 14 times, which is equivalent to last year's most expensive software transaction, such as SAP's acquisition of Qualtrics and Salesforce's acquisition of MuleSoft.
In the last round of financing in December last year, Looker had 600 employees and was valued at $1.6 billion.
Investors have been waiting for Google to join this trading game, because AWS has established a huge advantage, and Microsoft is investing a lot of money to keep the second position. According to Canalys data, as of the end of 2018, Google's share of the cloud market was 7.6%, lagging behind AWS's 32% and Microsoft's 13.7%.
It is worth mentioning that, according to people familiar with the matter, AWS and Microsoft have also expressed their willingness to acquire Looker , but this matter has not been officially confirmed.
"Acquisitions are only a matter of time." Raymond James analyst Aaron Kessler wrote in a report on Thursday: "With the emergence of Looker, the problem has become'there are still on the GCP shopping list. what?'"
Kurian began a conversation with Looker in the first few months of this year to better understand the technology and how customers use it. People familiar with the matter said that these discussions quickly evolved into merger negotiations and led Looker to hire Qatalyst to understand market interest. They said that potential bidders have some strong interest, but no one can compare to Google's bid.
In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Kurian said: Alphabet's board of directors approved the transaction, which to a large extent marks the company's plan to achieve growth in the enterprise. He said that although Google’s valuation is 63% higher than Looker’s valuation six months ago, he would not make this transaction if he hadn’t seen the value of the transaction to Google.
Google and Looker have been familiar with each other before. According to a Google Cloud blog post), the two companies have a total of 350 joint customers, including BuzzFeed, Hearst, and WPP Essence. Google Cloud Platform provides a variety of products to cater to Looker's technology. CapitalG, Google's late-stage investment arm, led the company's $81.5 million round of financing in 2017.
The cooperation between Google and Quattrone can also be traced back a long time ago. The company hired Qatalyst as a consultant in 2008, when Microsoft was trying to acquire Yahoo. In 2011, Qatalyst represented Motorola in acquisition negotiations with Google. Quattrone has been engaged in the legendary and controversial investment banking business on Wall Street. When Qatalyst was founded in 2008, Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google at the time, said: The emergence of Qatalyst is "an important development in the technology industry."
Looking back at the two major acquisitions in Google’s history
The first two acquisitions in Google's history were the mobile communications company Motorola and the smart home company Nest.
On August 15, 2011, Google announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobile for US$ 40 per share, totaling approximately US$12.5 billion .
On May 22, 2012, Google announced that it had completed the acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Former Google Global Vice President and Google China President Kai-Fu Lee said that this transaction is mainly for Motorola Mobile's patents. Google wants to use this to protect the Android community and respond to patent lawsuits by companies such as Apple. Through this transaction, Google can obtain 17,000 patents worldwide, in addition to 7,000 patents under review.
But for Motorola, Google is not the ultimate destination.
On January 30, 2014, Lenovo Group announced that Lenovo would acquire Motorola Mobile for US$2.9 billion .
I have sought to sell twice, and the price is not as good as once. The current situation of Motorola must have been heard by many readers. The former communication giant has fallen to this point, which is unavoidable.
On January 14, 2014, Google announced that it would acquire Nest (Nest Labs Inc), a smart home device manufacturer , for US$3.2 billion in cash. The co-founder of Nest and the "father of iPod" Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers (Matt Rogers) will join Google at the same time.
谷歌 CEO 拉里·佩奇曾在新闻稿中表示：很激动能把如此优秀的家居体验带给更多的家庭，同时实现 Nest 团队的梦想。
Nest CEO 法德尔也同样表示很高兴加入谷歌，在谷歌的支持下，Nest 可以更好地创造简单、贴心的设备，让家居生活更简单。
可是，两个团队的梦想最后都没有实现，或者说，没有实现的那么圆满。
2015 年 Google 成立 Alphabet 母公司之后，Nest 便被拆分了出去，以独立子公司的形式运营。与此同时，Nest 在新产品的研发进展上非常缓慢，被 Google 收购后的很长一段时间里，没有推出过新的硬件产品。
国外媒体的一份报道显示：Nest 公司受访员工指责管理层随意变更指令、枪毙项目计划，这也是导致公司在产品端进展缓慢很重要的一个原因。
产品推进慢、管理出现混乱，最终导致的就是团队成员的大批离职。2015 年，Nest 就损失了 70 名员工，到了 2016 年 6 月，Nest 创始人之一的法德尔宣布辞去首席执行官的职务。
此后将近两年的时间里，Nest 就处于“三不管”状态，谷歌方面似乎也没想好要把他们放在哪里。所幸，在 2018 年，Google 硬件负责人 Rick Osterloh 正式宣布 Nest 已经与谷歌的硬件部门合并，到这里，Nest 的故事就算告一段落了。
今天，谷歌以 26 亿美元收购的 Looker 未来会走向何方，还真让人有些期待。