Google Buys Jetpac, Ends Apple Support

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) bought city guide app creator Jetpac and immediately announced it would withdraw its product from Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) store. The battle between the two app stores continues to heat up.

Jetpac has a model that it describes in two ways:

We can spot lipstick, blue sky views, hipster mustaches and more, through advanced image processing on billions of photos.

Jetpac City Guides is a visual guide to local recommendations for over 6,000 cities all around the world, from San Francisco to Kathmandu.

And,

No endless lists or reviews homework. People vote places up by sharing photos on Instagram.

Jetpac City Guides are fun Top Ten lists ranked by Snappyness Rating. The top Hipster Bar in San Francisco by Snappyness is the one with the most photos and photos of Hipsters shared.

The beauty of the business model is that Jetpac does not pay anything for this “content,” and the small enterprise is probably, therefore, inexpensive to run.

READ MORE: Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2015

Google needs more products to enhance its Maps service, and probably Google Wallet, and its Android OS, which runs on millions of smartphones. These phones represent the next generation of search, off the PC and into the broader, movable world.

Jetpac is another example of a company that Google likely did not pay much for. Reuters reports that no price was disclosed. It can become part of Google’s laboratory of products, which can be enhanced or rejected. Google is famous for scavenging. The search company looks for small operations that will support its largest initiatives. Based on Google’s earnings, there is no evidence that these small acquisitions make money. And, with tens of billions of dollars in the bank, Google’s risk in the M&A realm is very limited.

So, Jetpac will be promoted in Google’s App store. If downloads show it is popular and enhances Google’s reach in local services, it will stay. Google’s history is that if it does not do these things, it will quietly go away.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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