Boston, MA 06/11/2014 (wallstreetpr) – On Tuesday, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) confirmed its deal with Skybox Imaging Inc., a satellite startup that has designed satellites to capture daily photos and videos of the Earth. The deal is fixed at a price of $500 million, comparatively lower than the earlier speculations of $1 billion.
Longer Term Look
Skybox was established in 2009 and was able to garner $94 million in the form of investments from various venture firms, as reported by Dow Jones VentureSource. Some of the prominent investors in the startup include Besseer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. The concept of the capturing photos and videos of the Earth through small and cheap satellites was first laid out by the founders at Stanford University as a business plan for their course.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s intentions to buy the startup is preliminary to take leverage of its image capturing capabilities. However, in a deeper sense, Google could engage Skybox in its internet access work, as the search engine giant is increasingly hastening its efforts to cover the globe with balloons, satellites and drones. Google’s idea to launch a fast internet from the sky is aimed at boosting the number of searchers on its engines, and most importantly to augment its revenues through advertising. Apart from this, Skybox could also boost the company’s services like Maps and Gmail.
Google Maps
With the deal through, employees of Skybox would work closely with Google’s Maps unit. At present, Google Maps update its images of the Earth on a monthly or yearly basis, as it collects the image data from nearly 1,000 sources. Thus, post the Skybox deal, Google could hope to update these images on a daily basis. Senior Managing Partner of Northwest Venture Partners, Promod Haque, said that Skybox could work with Google to generate useful satellite images like that of crops, traffic or construction. Haque said that generating clear pictures is also on the agenda as it would further enhance Google Maps, which is Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s basic service on smartphones.
