Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) on Thursday announced that it has acquired Anvato, an eight year old video-processing company and supplier of over-the-top video. The details of the deal are yet to be disclosed.
Anvato will merge with Google’s cloud division. The company currently offers its video software platform to a number of media and entertainment companies such as Univision and Fox Sports, NBCUniversal, Cox Media, CBS Local Media, Telemundo encode and Bravo.
This software enables automatic encoding, editing, publishing and distribution of video content across different platforms.
With this acquisition, Google expects a boost in its cloud business as it will be able to offer scalable media processing and workflows in the cloud. This in turn should help it win media clients because it will be able to offer high quality live video and content to their own clients.
Over-the-top video services are increasingly becoming popular. These services are cloud dependent and do not require traditional distribution media like satellite or cable. Therefore, public cloud providers such as Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) , International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) are increasingly trying to tap this market.
It would be interesting to see how the competitive atmosphere builds up with Google’s new move to get a share of this rapidly growing space.
At present, Google has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).
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