Google Acquires Business Intelligence Company Looker to Open a New Battlefield of Cloud Computing
Google recently announced that it will acquire the business intelligence company Looker Data Science in the form of 2.6 billion dollars in cash, the largest acquisition in the public cloud market.
This acquisition will help Google compete better with AWS and Microsoft, Hong Kong server However, Google did not disclose too many details about how to strategically integrate Looker, and only said that it would release the roadmap after regulatory approval.
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said, "They have a lot of ideas about how to further integrate the Looker product." But he did not provide more details except that he mentioned that one of the measures is to enable voice recognition for BI queries. Kurian said, "Looker will continue to operate as an independent subsidiary, and its existing relationship with third-party data platforms and cloud providers will not be affected."
Google believes that this acquisition strengthens Google's position as a provider of cloud imperceptible services, and also highlights the success of BigQuery cloud data warehouse, which Kurian calls "an important part of digital transformation". Looker will provide customers with a common data model and enhanced analysis capabilities, enabling customers to build collaborative, data-driven applications across various industries.
Kurian said: "We now have an end-to-end solution. Customers can obtain data in batches, preprocess data, analyze unstructured data, and provide services from BigQuery and other data sources through Looker, whether in Google Cloud, internal environment or other clouds."
New battlefield of cloud computing war
Data warehouse and analysis are becoming a new battlefield in the cloud platform market, because manufacturers realize that customers are rapidly migrating local big data workloads to the cloud platform. Cloud manufacturers sell a wider range of additional services by capturing customer data for big data projects.
Maribel Lopez, founder and chief analyst of Lopez Research, said that the attraction of Looker to business users has become an entry point for Google to sell its expanding analytical tools and AI tool product lines. "Google has become the choice of business organizations that want to do more with data."
Doug Henschen, an analyst at Constellation Research, believes that this acquisition may trigger a series of acquisitions and integrations in the cloud computing big data market. He said: "This is just the beginning. In the future, we may see more acquisitions by Google in this field, and we may also see the response from competitor AWS."
Microsoft has been investing in the Power BI platform, and vigorously advocated "bringing more data into this cloud platform, making data more sticky and promoting continuous storage costs, which can bring you returns," Henschen wrote. "We are very concerned about whether AWS responds by developing or acquiring a company that can provide more attractive and comprehensive analysis and BI products than QuickSight. So far, Constellation believes that QuickSight has not gained too much share in the market."
Looker's BI and visualization capabilities are "an excellent complement to the new products of BigQuery cloud data warehouse and Anthos hybrid cloud," said James Kobielus, chief analyst of Wikibon, a market research company. Anthos is a renamed platform of Google Cloud Platform, a hybrid cloud and multi cloud engine.
Kobielus said: "Looker provides Google Cloud with a multi cloud and agile BI product, which can integrate data from various [software as a service] applications, and enable users to extract data from any public cloud or internal deployment environment source. This is just the kind of strategic acquisition that Google Cloud needs to fill the gap."
Google is investing heavily in machine learning. In this immature field, customers must deal with a lot of complicated work related to data governance and testing. Lopez said: "It's really painful to integrate multiple tools." In the race to build the most comprehensive AI toolset, Looker has brought Google a leading edge - although only temporarily. "Although customers may purchase all products from one manufacturer, they can benefit from choosing a manufacturer with a larger market share."
Founded in 2011, Looker stands out in the crowded business intelligence field by automating and simplifying most data extraction and preparation processes. The cloud engine of Looker can directly query multiple sources, and the visualization platform of Looker can be shared and embedded into other applications after optimization.
So far, Looker has raised $280 million, the most recent of which was $103 million six months ago. Google and Looker have a four-year sales partnership with more than 350 common customers. Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research, said, "The similarity of ideas and directions makes the two very suitable. It is worth looking forward to how Looker will complement Google's other analysis, machine learning and artificial intelligence services."
However, this may take several months, considering that technology companies are subject to more stringent competition scrutiny from the US Congress and regulatory agencies. Kurian did not predict the timeline for the approval of the transaction, but said that he did not think there was any compliance issue with the acquisition. He said: "At present, there are many analysis tools, so we will not focus on this market. Other market participants also have their own analysis tools."
Frank Bien, CEO of Looker, emphasized in an article on the company's blog that there would be no change for existing customers and partners. "Today's announcement consolidates our and Google Cloud's commitment to multi cloud. In the future, Looker customers will see our continuous support for all cloud databases, and partners can continue to cooperate with us as before."
Charles King, chief analyst of Pund IT, said that this transaction "shows that Google attaches great importance to cloud services focusing on enterprises and businesses".
Google is considered to be the third largest manufacturer in the public cloud market, far behind AWS and Microsoft. A year and a half ago, Google hired Kurian, a senior Oracle executive, as CEO of Google Cloud. Now, Google has made this $2.6 billion bet, which shows that Google is constantly fulfilling its commitment to invest money in more valuable places.
