Google to acquire big data analytics company Looker

Google has announced plans to acquire data analytics platform Looker in a $2.6 Billion all-cash transaction. The deal is expected to close later this year, at which point Looker will become part of Google Cloud, helping serve Google customers a more “comprehensive analytics solution.

This move is consistent with Google’s recent multi-cloud strategy shift, which has included the launch of Anthos, a rebranded Google Cloud Services platform that plays nice with AWS and Azure. “Google Cloud is being used by many of the leading organizations in the world for analytics and decision-making. The combination of Google Cloud and Looker will enable customers to harness data in new ways to drive their digital transformation.

Founded in 2011, Looker is one of a number of platforms helping companies visualize and make sense of their vast pools of data by tapping myriad sources, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, and MySQL. Looker had raised nearly $300 million since its inception, including an $81.5 million series D round of funding back in 2017 that was led by none other than Capital G — the investment unit of Google parent company Alphabet. Given the duo’s existing cloud partnership shared customers, and investment affiliations, today’s news shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.

This is a huge deal for Google Cloud, easily topping the $625 million it paid for Apigee in 2016. It marks the first major deal in the Kurian era as Google tries to beef up its market share. While the two companies share common customers, the addition of Looker should bring a net gain that could help them upsell to other parts of the Looker customer base.