FTC Reviews Google's Purchase of Navigation App Waze 95
An anonymous reader writes "Google's acquisition of Waze has piqued the interest of the FTC and is now facing an antitrust review. "Google confirmed that it has been contacted by lawyers from the Federal Trade Commission over the company's '$1.1 billion acquisition of the mobile navigation company Waze, which closed in mid-June. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on details of the antitrust review by the FTC. Representatives of the agency didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.'"
Who needed the other? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me answer that:
Google didn't need Waze. This is a purchase to keep Waze out of Microsoft or Apple's hands. They won't admit it but It must be painful for Microsoft because they are a Waze investor. [bgr.com]
Editors are fucking illiterate morons (Score:5, Insightful)
"piqued"
You fucking illiterate editors.
Re:Shutting out competitor or buying up talent? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, what exactly makes Waze's talent "top" as opposed to any other software company out there that could get bought?
And if Google is hurting for talent (something tells me it isn't), surely they could hire people for less than $12 million per head in this difficult job market.
The only talented person in this transaction was whoever convinced Google to pay over $1.2B.
Re:Shutting out competitor or buying up talent? (Score:2, Insightful)
So you and thousands of others are working for free for a for-profit company on a proprietary platform? And people wonder why there's so much unemployment...
Nothing new, though. Games have done this for years with open betas. Hell, some games charge people to beta test their games!
While that in itself boggles the mind, wouldn't your time be better spent contributing to Openstreetmap, which is open and can't be appropriated by a megacorp?