The New York Times has a fascinating account of Google's purchase of Waze. Waze does not make a significant profit. The purchase by Google is clearly a strategic acquisition. It seems increasingly common for large American technology companies to purchase small startups for incredibly high prices for one of two reasons:
Niche
The startup provides an important technology missing...
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I teach Computer Science to college students, develop software, podcast, and write books about programming including the Classic Computer Science Problems series. I'm the publisher of the hyper local newsletter BTV Daily.
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Based on tdSimple originally by Lasantha Bandara and released under the CC By 3.0.