Google to Acquire API Management Provider Apigee for $625 Million
Google, the multinational corporation which specializes in internet-related services and products, has announced that it intends to purchase the API management platform Apigee for $625 million, at a price of $17.40 per share. Several well-known companies use Apigee to manage APIs. The addition of Apigee’s solutions to Google Cloud will accelerate the customers’ move to adopt high-quality digital interactions in order to support businesses. Apigee will make it simpler to implement and publish the requisite APIs.
In an official blog, Diane Greene, the SVP at Google said, “Today, we’re excited to announce that Google has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Apigee, a provider of application programming interface (API) management. APIs — the mechanism developers use to interface and integrate with outside apps and services — are vital for how business gets done today in the fast-growing digital and mobile marketplace.”
A reasonably good API should support security and must allow companies to innovate their services while they support a stable interface to services and apps using the API. A good API should offer testing support and must include usage analytics to guide the company’s developers. Apigee provides such enterprise tools which help businesses scale data, apps, and API. With high-profile clients in an area of strategic importance, Apigee will help Google stay ahead in the competition.
By acquiring Apigee, Google is partnering with an established player in the space of API management which will help the company to go through the process of becoming more digital. At present, Google Cloud customers are already benefitting from Google Container Engine and Google App Engine. Now with the API management platform offered by Apigee, they will be able to front these services with a simpler way to offer exported APIs.
Greene added that they look forward to welcome Apigee’s team to Google. Greene has been putting in consistent efforts to take Google to new heights and enhance the company’s corporate computing profile since she joined the company last year. In her tenure, Google has appointed new leaders for cloud efforts and has been streamlining engineering efforts. Greene predicts that this acquisition will increase Google’s momentum of such efforts.
Regarding this acquisition, Matthew Baier, COO of Built.io commented, “This acquisition shows that even the biggest players such as Google don't necessarily have all the answers yet when it comes to APIs. In other words, they were addressing a gap in their portfolio with this purchase. Realistically, it's going to take Google a year to fully integrate Apigee into their products and processes. Meanwhile, the industry is faced with a bit of a vacuum: Apigee was the last dominant, independent API management company (3Scale and Mashery go snapped up earlier by RedHat and TIBCO).”
Matthew also added, “This acquisition will make Google's platform stronger and will likely trigger further proliferation of APIs across its ecosystem. Overall, it's a great bellwether for the API economy and a sign that it's doing well and growing. It’s an indicator that APIs will continue to be a hot topic for a while. As we predicted last year for 2016, APIs are going mainstream and bubbling up beyond the IT department all the way to the office of the CEO. APIs aren't just for geeks anymore. They're for any and every business. They're for the masses. Google just made that loud and clear to the world.”
