Lot’s of speculation lately about the acquisition roadmap ahead for – including 5 pretty good reasons why they might buy Jawbone by Simons Chase (from May here). Simons summary version is this: 1. Jawbone’s recent acquisitions (including BodyMedia for more than $100M) make it the largest company in the wearable+fitness+health space with 300 patents, tech talent accumulated through acquisition and years of experience with designing and selling wearables. 2. The opportunity in fitness and monitoring is large and fast growing – but there is a bigger opportunity to impact global health in the long term. (cites Credit Suisse report – with coverage here) 3. Kleiner is motivated for a big exit in a trendy space. 4. Jawbone could enhance Google’s mobile and cloud strategy. 5. Google’s philosophy is to organize the world’s data and do no harm. Numbers 1-3 make good sense, but 4 and 5 – at least to me – are still a tad fuzzy. For one thing, Google’s “Do No Harm” strategy was slightly derailed about 2 years ago when they settled with the Department of Justice to the tune of $500M. The infractions involved the use of AdWords for promoting offshore pharmacies to sell prescription drugs here in the U.S. We definitely need lower cost prescriptions (Google’s logical intent), but not at the expense of unlicensed pharmacy’s that could (potentially) sell counterfeit or fake drugs. Something I wrote about at the time of the settlement (here). Hey, (relatively) small fine, no jail time – onward and upward. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
