5 Things To Know About Google’s Acquisition Of Looker Data Sciences

‘Looker extends our business analytics offering with two important capabilities --first, the ability to define business metrics once in a consistent way across data sources,’ Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says. ‘Second, Looker also provides users with a powerful analytics platform that delivers applications for business intelligence and use-case specific solutions such as Sales Analytics, as well as a flexible, embedded analytics product to collaborate on business decisions.’

Google’s $2.6 billion deal to buy Looker Data Sciences Inc. marks a major initial salvo in new Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s charge to beef up the No. 3 cloud provider’s offerings and close the gap with rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

It’s the first major Google Cloud acquisition since Kurian formally took the reins of the No. 3 cloud provider this year and vowed to aggressively invest in its sales organization and channel relationship to boost its growth. It’s the largest Google purchase since the Mountain View, Calif., company bought smart-home product maker Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in 2014, and its largest cloud-related acquisition since the purchase of API company Apigee in 2016 in a transaction valued at about $625 million.

The new deal for the software-as-a-service (SaaS) company instantly makes Google Cloud an “analytics powerhouse,” according to analyst Hyoun Park, chief executive officer of Arlington, Mass.-based Amalgam Insights.

Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Looker’s unified platform for business intelligence, data applications and embedded analytics, extends Google Cloud’s business analytics offerings with two important capabilities, including the ability to define business metrics once in a consistent way across data sources, Kurian said in a blog post on the deal.

“This makes it easy for anyone to query data while maintaining consistent definitions in their calculations, ensuring teams get accurate results,” Kurian said. “Second, Looker also provides users with a powerful analytics platform that delivers applications for business intelligence and use-case specific solutions such as Sales Analytics, as well as a flexible, embedded analytics product to collaborate on business decisions.”

Click through to read more about what Looker brings to the table, Google’s and Looker’s continued hybrid- and multi-cloud commitment, why the acquisition makes Google Cloud an “analytics powerhouse,” the deal fundamentals and Google Cloud parent company Alphabet’s previous funding of Looker.

What Looker Brings To Google Cloud

Looker’s analytics platform provides consistency in data definitions, rich visualizations, data applications and embedded analytics, according to Google Cloud.

The acquisition will allow the cloud provider to give customers a broader analytics solution to leverage analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). It also will provide industry-specific analytics solutions in Google Cloud’s key verticals – such as supply chain analytics in retailing and media analytics in entertainment – to aid in Kurian’s drive to attract more enterprise customers.

Many of the companies’ top customers already use Google Cloud’s BigQuery data warehouse and Looker together, and combining the two will accelerate how they analyze data, deliver business intelligence and build data-driven applications, according to Google Cloud.

“Many customers use Google Cloud, including Google BigQuery as their Enterprise Data Warehouse, for business analytics -- using SQL to query real-time data streams, running fully managed Hadoop and Spark clusters, and using machine learning to automatically categorize and run forecasting and predictions on their data,” Kurian said in his blog post. “A rapidly growing list of customers are also migrating their existing enterprise data warehouses from legacy technology stacks to our business analytics offering.”

“Looker extends our business analytics offering with two important capabilities --first, the ability to define business metrics once in a consistent way across data sources,” Kurian said. “Second, Looker also provides users with a powerful analytics platform that delivers applications for business intelligence and use-case specific solutions such as Sales Analytics, as well as a flexible, embedded analytics product to collaborate on business decisions.”

Customers use Looker for its flexible modeling layer and extensible web architecture to build data-driven apps, and because its 100 percent in-database analytics greatly simplifies DataOps, according to Google Cloud.

For business intelligence, Looker offers data modelling at any scale across hybrid and multi-cloud, interactive reports, dashboards with “stunning” visualization, and governance and unified metrics. For data applications, it features data applications and solutions for key industries and horizontal use-cases, including applications for sales analytics, web analytics and digital marketing analytics. And for embedded analytics, it offers embedded interactive data visualization in custom applications or ISV Apps for contextual insights with “Powered by Looker.”

The deal accelerates Looker and Google’s ability to affect a “sea-change” in data analytics, according to Looker CEO Frank Bien.

“The combination of Google Cloud’s BigQuery and associated data infrastructure, and Looker’s platform for innovative data solutions, will reinvent what it means to solve business problems with data at an entirely different scale and value point,” Bien said in a blog post. “Together, we’ll have better reach, more resources and the brightest minds in both analytics and cloud infrastructure working together.”

Looker partners can expect to continue to work with the company as they have before, said Bien, noting that Looker’s “Department of Customer Love” chat support will be bolstered by additional Google Cloud resources.

Google Cloud and Looker already have more than 350 joint customers, including Buzzfeed, Hearst, King, Sunrun, WPP Essence and Yahoo!

Deal Makes Google Cloud An ‘Analytics Powerhouse’

In Looker, Google Cloud got the best cloud business intelligence solution in the marketplace and “instantly becomes an analytics powerhouse,” according to analyst Hyoun Park, chief executive officer of Amalgam Insights, a technology research firm based in Arlington, Mass.

AWS already has Quicksight, but nobody uses it, Hyoun said, and Looker and Microsoft Power BI are far superior in their separate ways. The Looker/Google Cloud deal leaves AWS significantly behind its cloud competitors and in need of a better solution to analyze RedShift data, according to Park.

“Looker will provide Google both a leading cloud business intelligence solution to allow customers to analyze their data quickly, as well as the ability to better visualize how enterprises are using data in general,” Hyoun said. “This is especially important as Google learns how to support enterprise data in greater detail and start chipping away at Microsoft’s and Amazon's big head starts. And this acquisition jump-starts Google's ability to provide departmental- and vertical-specific cloud offerings to better support the business world.”

While Google has been very strong in AI, algorithms, machine learning and big data, it’s done very little to support business intelligence and analytics solutions, such as the standard reporting, data analysis and data querying that make up the majority of business analytics use cases, according to Hyoun.

“If you are an operations manager or a sales manager, you don't typically use Google to manage the metrics of your team, but you would use Looker,” he said. “So Looker ends up closing this practical gap between data and AI in the business world, which will be extremely useful for Google Cloud customers.”

Hybrid- And Multi-Cloud Commitment

Google Cloud remains committed to a hybrid- and multi-cloud strategy and will retain and expand Looker’s capabilities to analyze data across clouds, according to Kurian.

“While we deepen the integration of Looker into Google Cloud Platform, customers will continue to benefit from Looker’s multi-cloud functionality and its ability to bring together data from SaaS applications like Salesforce, Marketo and Zendesk, as well as traditional data sources,” Kurian said. “This empowers companies to create a cohesive layer built on any cloud database, including Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL, Snowflake, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server or Teradata, as well as on other public clouds and in on-premise data centers.”

The deal follows Google Cloud’s unveiling of Anthos at its Google Next ’19 conference in San Francisco in April. The cloud provider rebranded its Google Cloud Services hybrid cloud platform and added capabilities that extend beyond customers’ on-premise data centers and Google Cloud to competitors’ third-party clouds, including those of rivals AWS and Microsoft Azure.

The Fundamentals

Google is buying Looker in a $2.6 billion all-cash deal that’s expected to be completed later this year and is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals at a time when the company is faced with an antitrust probe by the U.S. Justice Department.

Looker was last valued at $1.6 billion after a $103 million Series E financing round led by Premji Invest in early December, according to Crunchbase. At the time, it reported its revenue had grown 70 percent year-over-yearfor the 12-month period ended Oct. 31, 2018, and it had added almost 500 new customers, including Cisco, ESPN, Marks and Spencer Plc, Trivago, Adyen, Live Nation Entertainment, Bell Media, SunRun and Five Guys. The company had close to 600 employees after adding more than 200 employees at its seven offices during 2018, when it expanded into Tokyo.

Google Cloud and Looker have been very close partners for more than four years, during which they’ve seen not only technology synergies, but similarities in culture, approaches to customer problems, sales motions and a passion to solve large data challenges, according to Bien, who will join Google Cloud.

Looker was co-founded in 2012 by Lloyd Tabb, the company’s chairman and chief technology officer, and Ben Porterfield, vice president of engineering. Frank Bien joined as CEO in May 2013. Prior to that Bien was senior vice president of strategy for Sunnyvale, Calif., storage vendor Virsto for four months, before it was acquired by VMware in 2013. He served as vice president of San Mateo, Calif.-based big data company Greenplum, where he led its acquisition by EMC in 2010.

Google Cloud said it will continue to expand Looker’s investments in product development, go-to-market and customer success capabilities, and the two companies have a well-defined, phased plan to integrate their product offerings.

Alphabet And Looker

Looker has raised a total of $280.5 million in eight rounds of funding since its start in 2013.

CapitalG, a growth equity investment fund of Google parent Alphabet Inc., previously had invested in Looker, as it did with Nest.

CapitalG, which helps tech companies scale with support from Google resources, led an $81.5 million Series E funding round for Looker in March 2017, with participation from Geodesic Capital, Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Sapphire Ventures.

“Today’s businesses have access to more data than ever, and while it's become increasingly difficult to understand all of that data, it's also extremely valuable to those companies that can,” Gene Frantz, a CapitalG partner, said in a statement at the time. “After watching this space for years, we were impressed by Looker's unique holistic solution and are thrilled to support the company in its continued rapid growth.”