Google has a long and successful history of acquisitions, as also a long history of lack of direction and headless actions even in their youth days. It's probably just natural for a company with too much money to invest that way.
Google was VC funded. They were a classic case where VC makes sense: highly risky, and needed to spend money up front to get usage in order to make money (you can't sell ads if you don't have traffic, can't pay for serving traffic if you don't have ad revenue, VC breaks the circle).
I'm not sure what difference it makes but it was actually Google, not Google Ventures, that made the investment.
> Google is placing a big bet on it: in addition to the funding, Android and Chrome leader Sundar Pichai will join Magic Leap's board, as will Google's corporate development vice-president Don Harrison. The funding is also coming directly from Google itself — not from an investment arm like Google Ventures — all suggesting this is a strategic move to align the two companies and eventually partner when the tech is more mature down the road.
Is this not in direct competition with their "hire-by-acquisition" model? Generally, Google acquires companies early on for a price that is favorable to the founders, but wouldn't be favorable to any institutional VC since it wouldn't "move the needle" enough. If Google Ventures invests, then this means that they'd be hesitant to sell for a founder-friendly price to google itself.
Then again, maybe companies that say no to an early stage acquisition, are prime candidates for investment. Something that was impossible before Google Ventures.
You imply a lot, but apparently the investment to Google, according to wikipedia is because Google bought a company they invested (Keyhole, later become Google earth) and apparently they sold the stocks after the acquisition. Or do you have more info?
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