Google contract rejected for $23 billion…Who is the Israeli company Waze? | technology

In the last few weeks, the world of finance and technology has been in the spotlight Israeli company A startup working in the cybersecurity sector called “Wiz”, because “AlphaBit” is the Internet giant and the owner of the search engine “Google“I decided to acquire this small company for $23 billion, in the biggest deal for Alphabet, which has acquired hundreds of startups.

After negotiations that lasted several weeks, Waze rejected the acquisition agreement and decided to remain an independent company without being connected to Google or other companies. Since the company needed funding, they decided to list itself on the stock exchange in the hope of achieving additional profits without losing ownership of the company.

But why did Waze reject this acquisition despite its great value, and more importantly, what made the Internet giant acquire the Israeli company for this value?

A traditional cybersecurity company

Like many Israeli startups, Waze is based in the cybersecurity sector and offers several high-level cybersecurity services that companies always need to secure their servers and accounts.

It cannot be said that Waze is an innovative company that offers unique solutions that are not available to other companies, because there are many competitors in several countries of the world, and perhaps that “Crowdstrike” caused the Internet crisis. at the end of July.

The company was founded in 2020 in Tel Aviv by a group of Israeli cybersecurity engineers, and the company’s headquarters quickly moved to New York City to be close to the global cybersecurity field and close to its most important clients. the company, without losing its Tel Aviv headquarters or its employees.

In May of this year, the company received $1 billion in funding based on a total company valuation of more than $12 billion. Therefore, the company has raised $1.9 billion since its inception in the world of cybersecurity, achieving more better than many companies From competitors around the world.

It is also worth noting that the company has obtained cooperation contracts with all Israeli government institutions through Accel, which represents the distribution interface for the company’s services, which has contributed to increasing its value significantly over previous years.

“Waze” is the missing cornerstone among many of Google’s core services (Reuters)

Why does Google need Waze?

“Waze” represents the missing cornerstone among many of Google’s core and preferred services for companies, especially software hosting solutions and cloud servers, in which Google faces many challenges , starting with the presence of strong competition such as “AWS”, a subsidiary of “Waze”.Amazon“And “Azur”, a subsidiary of “Microsoft“.

In all cases, competitors have their own security solutions, as well as collaborating with external companies to provide their own and exclusive services to users. getting cloud servers as one of the most important pillars in cybersecurity, Google introduces the emerging Israeli company. “Waze” in its arsenal allowed the company to improve its services and thus increase its percentage in the cloud services sector, since Google’s share is limited to only 10%, compared to 32% for Amazon and 23% for Microsoft. .

Until now, Google has not been able to enter the business sector through its cloud services, unlike what is happening in the consumer sector in which it is popular as a result on user trust on Android phones and smart computers that rely on Google Drive.

Of course, it cannot be said that the deal would have gone unnoticed if the board of directors of “Waze” had approved it, since American anti-monopoly legislation is usually still an obstacle to such deals , and this may be what happened with the “Microsoft”. ” and an “Activision-Blizzard” deal a year. However, Amazon preferred to abandon the agreement completely.

The legal conflict facing the American authorities was not for Waze, because such cases take a long time to be judged, which reduces the capital that the company currently has, in addition has been reducing the value of the company during the period of the case.

More benefit from the contract

At first glance, Waze seems to be losing out by turning down the biggest Google deal, but in the end, Waze is getting more profits due to the widespread attention in the media and the coverage he received after turning down the Google deal.

The company’s board of directors is well aware of this, so they decided, according to its key statement, to launch the company for public subscription and market the company’s shares directly to customers. -investment around the world, which is a good use of this media coverage.

Google is facing major challenges in the hosting and cloud servers sector, with strong competition from Amazon’s AWS (Reuters)

The biggest deal in Google history.

Google’s history is filled with many successful and large deals, as the giant company has adopted the acquisition of emerging companies as its general philosophy over the past years, and could the acquisition of YouTube in 2006 for $ 1.6 billion is considered one of the first and the largest. successful deals ever, how he reached… YouTube is now worth more than $31 billion, meaning that its value has increased more than 15 times.

After that, the company went on to acquire the services of AdMob, which is an advertising service that displays ads directly on mobile phones, and this is the first image for Google’s advertising services This deal was completed in 2007 for $750 million.

Google contracts include many companies, such as HTC for the smartphone maker, which was completed in 2017 for $ 1.1 billion, Nest in 2014 for $ 3.2 billion, and Fitbit (FitBit in 2007 for $2.1 billion, the Israeli “Waze” in 2007 for $1.3 billion, and then “Motorola” in 2012 for $12.5 billion, which is the largest deal in the company’s history.

Google is one of the companies that invests heavily in the Israeli technology sector and is always looking for emerging companies to acquire. The acquisition of Waze in 2007 may be the example. most of this provides several services through its application, although… The application is still available through the Google Play Store, but the basic application Google Maps has received many of the features of Waze.

It is also noted that Google always invests in companies whose services integrate with Google’s core services, such as investing in several digital advertising companies, which created the famous advertising network Google, AdSense, which the company relies on to earn extra money.

Google also bought several companies that manufacture technical products, such as HTC, Nest, Fitbit, and Motorola, although it later sold the latter for $6.9 billion, with a loss of more than 50% of its value. in 2014. However, the rest of the companies are still under his control and offer products that are popular with consumers, from smart watches and bracelets to mobile phones.

Israel’s technical department and cybersecurity

Israel has a large number of cybersecurity companies, such as Waze, but a large part of these companies do not work to directly secure users, but instead rely on hacking mobile phones and paying cyber espionage.

NSO and Cellebrite are two of the most prominent Israeli companies operating in this sector. donation to hacked Trump attacker’s phone.

The “Statista” platform report shows that there are 469 cybersecurity companies in Israel, which especially shows the interest of the Israeli government in this sector, but the presence of this large number of companies specialized in getting servers together with other companies that work to steal users. ‘ data and hacking their phones raises many questions.

In addition to the many hacking cases that occurred in Israeli companies and ministries, and perhaps the hacking of the Israeli Ministry of Defense computers that occurred last April is the clearest evidence of that, if the Ministry of Defense was not willing cooperation with such companies. or dealt with and hacked, Both of them are bad testimony against Israeli cybersecurity companies, and this leads us to ask: Does Waze deserve this agreement in the first place?