Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google

Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by meritt on Sunday February 05, 2017 @02:10PM (#13573949)

Google acquired Skybox for $500M in 2014. Curious what changed so significantly in 2.5 years that a half a billion investment was no longer viable. Based on the terms of this deal, it appears they were only after the imaging data itself. I'm guessing Skybox's VC demanded an exit instead of a lucrative multi-year data contract?

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by sanguy on Sunday February 05, 2017 @09:03PM (#13576020)

They also spent $2B roughly to launch 5 additional TerraBella satellites. So $2.5B sunk into this and rumors on the street is went for a few hundred million. As a Google shareholder I'm fucking pissed.

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by tyldum on Monday February 06, 2017 @04:49AM (#13578013)

Google only wanted data for analytics. When Google acquired Skybox it threw out their whole business model over night. Now they are able to have data access as a service and not bother with all the maintenance. Alphabet really tries to avoid everything that isn't purely software.

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by moretosee on Sunday February 05, 2017 @09:33PM (#13576113)

curious about the sell price. > $500M or < $500M?

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by swatkat on Sunday February 05, 2017 @09:42PM (#13576142)

From this[1] TechCrunch article:

>>> We’ve not heard a firm price. Aside from the $300 million figure we heard, another described Terra Bella as essentially being “donated” to Planet.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/25/google-satellite-planet/

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by darkwyng on Sunday February 05, 2017 @11:53PM (#13576591)

There are a slew of other earth imaging companies coming on line, will this hurt their valuations?

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by moretosee on Sunday February 05, 2017 @09:47PM (#13576156)

donated? what a joke! unless Google just want to write off some tax deductions.

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by madgar on Sunday February 05, 2017 @02:14PM (#13573974)

Ruth Porat is the change you're looking for

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by justicezyx on Sunday February 05, 2017 @02:24PM (#13574041)

I like the disciple.

But the change is real. Google has been gradually become more and more conventional. That probably was what Larry wanted in the move of creating Alphabet, after all.

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by Cheyana on Sunday February 05, 2017 @02:43PM (#13574131)

Yup. From Financial Review:

"Before Apple’s Steve Jobs died in 2011, he told Google cofounder and CEO Larry Page that his company was trying to do too much. As Page later told the Financial Times, he replied, “If we just do the same things we did before and don’t do something new, it seems like a crime to me." Yet Page also acknowledged that Jobs was right in one sense: he could manage only so many things before too many would get lost in the shuffle."

http://www.afr.com/technology/how-steve-jobs-last-advice-to-...

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by hueving on Sunday February 05, 2017 @06:36PM (#13575417)

>Before Apple’s Steve Jobs died in 2011

This is such a strange statement to me. Is there really a chance the reader will get confused and think that Steve spoke after he died?

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by rybosome on Sunday February 05, 2017 @07:27PM (#13575613)

I think the value in such a comment is placing it within a timeline of the person's life. It wouldn't make sense to relate a story from 1982 and mention it relative to Jobs' death, but discussing an event that occurred months prior seems appropriate. Imagine it in the same context as "prior to his second tenure with Apple".

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by cwp on Sunday February 05, 2017 @07:36PM (#13575645)

No. That's why mentioning his death is significant. It wasn't just sometime during his life, but at the very end, days before he died.

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by Inconel on Sunday February 05, 2017 @08:56PM (#13575989)

I'm somewhat surprised to learn that Jobs and Page were on speaking terms, particularly towards the end of Jobs' life, given the animosity, at least publicly displayed, between Apple and Google.

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by mdonahoe on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @12:52PM (#13591113)

My impression was that Jobs was most upset with Eric Schmidt, not Larry.

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Re:Planet to Acquire Terra Bella from Google by hkmurakami on Sunday February 05, 2017 @02:26PM (#13574051)

Yup. Going further down the "more force behind fewer arrows" approach with fiscal discipline.

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