Google receives approval from British competition regulator to acquire Looker Data Sciences for $2.6 billion

In an announcement on Thursday, Google said that its buyout deal with Looker Data Sciences worth $2.6 billion has been completed. Looker Data Sciences is a prominent name in the league of big-data analytics. The deal was previously waiting for approval from the British competition regulator.

The deal was initially publicized in June and marked Google’s cloud business’s first prominent acquisition under the new CEO Thomas Kurian. The current deal follows BigQuery in its footsteps that previously turned profitable for Google. BigQuery is a management tool for large datasets.  

Looker Competes With Power BI, Domo Inc., And Tableau Software

Competing against Microsoft’s Power BI, Domo Inc., and Tableau Software, Looker avoids the need of writing complicated scripts while performing calculations on high-value customers or the generated revenue to provide a visual representation of their data that makes it easier to analyze trends and patterns.

UK’s market regulator recently announced that after a thorough evaluation of the deal, it is confident that the market is not likely to be confronted with adverse effects like reduced competition or the overall quality of service upon completion of the deal. The CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) gave a green light to the two parties to go ahead with the acquisition as it saw no risk of higher prices for services either. According to the CMA:

“Although Google had the ability to make it difficult for rivals to access the Google generated data they need from online advertising and web analytics services, there was no strong evidence they would have the incentive to do this.”

Google’s Cloud Computing Segment Is A Distant Third Globally To Amazon And Microsoft

In terms of revenue, Google’s cloud computing segment currently marks a distant third globally with Amazon keeping the first position and Microsoft being on the second. The aforementioned deal has also received formal approvals from the Austrian Federal Competition Authority and the U.S Department of Justice.

Thomas Kurian commented on the acquisition and stated:

“We believe we will be uniquely positioned to address the data analytics and business intelligence demands of even more enterprises globally, across all industries.”

Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., is currently exchanging hands at around $1,518 per share in the stock market that marks just over 10% growth in 2020 so far. In 2019, Alphabet’s performance was largely upbeat with the tech giant having recorded around 30% of annual growth in its share prices.