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Was this company or app bought by Google or by Meta?

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The answers

Bought by Google or by Meta?

Google 12

  • YouTube Right Wrong

    Founded in 2005 by three former PayPal employees, the video platform was bought by Google in October 2006 for 1.65 billion dollars in shares, a price that seemed crazy at the time.

  • Android Right Wrong

    Google bought the small start-up Android, co-founded by Andy Rubin, as early as 2005, two years before the first iPhone. Its system has become the most widely used in the world on smartphones.

  • Waze Right Wrong

    The community navigation app, born in Israel, was bought by Google in 2013. It still lives alongside Google Maps, with its alerts reported live by drivers.

  • DeepMind Right Wrong

    This London artificial intelligence lab was bought by Google in 2014. Two years later, its AlphaGo program beat champion Lee Sedol at the game of Go, a historic first.

  • Fitbit Right Wrong

    The pioneer of fitness trackers was bought by Google for 2.1 billion dollars, a deal announced in 2019 and completed in January 2021, after a long review by competition authorities.

  • Nest Right Wrong

    The American maker of smart thermostats was bought by Google in 2014 for 3.2 billion dollars. Today the Nest brand covers Google's whole smart home range.

  • Motorola Right Wrong

    Google bought Motorola Mobility in 2012 for 12.5 billion dollars, mainly for its patents. It sold the handset business to China's Lenovo as early as 2014, keeping most of the patents.

  • Blogger Right Wrong

    In 2003 Google bought Pyra Labs, the company that had created Blogger. The blogging platform, one of the oldest on the web, still runs under Google's banner.

  • Snapseed Right Wrong

    The photo editing app Snapseed was bought by Google in 2012, along with its developer Nik Software. It has stayed free, on Android as well as on iPhone.

  • Kaggle Right Wrong

    Kaggle, the data science competition platform where enthusiasts from all over the world compete, was bought by Google in 2017 and brought into Google Cloud.

  • DoubleClick Right Wrong

    Google bought the online advertising specialist DoubleClick in 2008 for 3.1 billion dollars. It's one of the building blocks of its advertising empire, since merged into Google Marketing Platform.

  • Zagat Right Wrong

    In 2011 Google bought Zagat, the famous New York restaurant guide, to enrich its place listings, before selling it on in 2018 to the website The Infatuation.

Meta 9

  • Instagram Right Wrong

    Facebook bought Instagram in April 2012 for 1 billion dollars, when the app had only a handful of employees and had never made a single penny in revenue.

  • WhatsApp Right Wrong

    The messaging app was bought by Facebook in 2014 for around 19 billion dollars announced, the group's biggest ever acquisition. Today it has more than two billion users.

  • Oculus Right Wrong

    Facebook bought Oculus in 2014 for around 2 billion dollars, before its first consumer headset had even come out. This bet paved the way for the group's turn to the metaverse, and its new name, Meta.

  • Giphy Right Wrong

    Facebook bought Giphy, the huge library of animated GIFs, in 2020. The UK competition regulator then forced it to sell: Shutterstock took it over in 2023.

  • Beat Saber Right Wrong

    The famous virtual reality rhythm game, where you slice cubes with lightsabers, has belonged to Meta since it bought the Czech studio behind it, Beat Games, in 2019.

  • Supernatural Right Wrong

    In 2023 Meta bought the virtual reality fitness app Supernatural and its studio Within, after winning its court case against the US competition authority, which wanted to block the deal.

  • MSQRD Right Wrong

    This Belarusian selfie filter app, which turned faces into animals or celebrities, was bought by Facebook in 2016, in the middle of the filter war with Snapchat.

  • Mapillary Right Wrong

    This Swedish service for crowdsourced street-level photos, an open alternative to Street View, was bought by Facebook in 2020 to improve its own maps.

  • Onavo Right Wrong

    Facebook bought this Israeli company, which made a VPN, in 2013. The app was shut down in 2019 after strong criticism: it was also used to monitor how people used other apps.

Tech giants don't just invent things: they buy them. For more than twenty years, Google and Meta, formerly Facebook, have bought hundreds of start-ups, apps and services between them, many of which you may use every day without knowing who owns them. Some deals made the headlines, others went almost unnoticed, and a few companies have even been sold on since. For each card, there's just one question: who signed the cheque, Google or Meta? We're talking about the original acquisition, even if the company has changed hands since.

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10 cards, 20 seconds: the timer starts with your first choice.

Frequently asked questions

Why is Facebook called Meta?

In October 2021, the company Facebook renamed itself Meta Platforms to mark its shift towards the metaverse, those virtual 3D worlds. The social network itself is still called Facebook: only the group changed its name.

Why do tech giants buy so many start-ups?

Buying a company brings in a technology, a team of engineers or millions of users in one go, far faster than building it in-house. It's also a way of absorbing a promising rival before it becomes a threat.

Can regulators block an acquisition?

Yes. In the United States as in Europe, competition authorities review large deals and can block them or attach conditions. They sometimes accuse the giants of "killer acquisitions", designed to stifle competition at birth.

What is an acqui-hire?

It's an acquisition whose main goal is to recruit the team rather than keep the product. The app that has been bought is often shut down within months, and its founders join the buyer's teams.

Photo credits

YouTube : Photo Berthold Werner, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Android : Photo Johan Carlström, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Waze : Photo Countryball mys123, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; DeepMind : Photo Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Fitbit : Photo PamD, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Nest : Photo Jiří Sedláček, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Motorola : Photo Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Blogger : Photo Sammlung der Medien und Wissenschaft, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Snapseed : Photo André Karwath aka Aka, CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons ; Kaggle : Photo RoyalxOptimum, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; DoubleClick : Photo Jacek Halicki, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Zagat : Photo Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Instagram : Photo Jacek Halicki, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; WhatsApp : Photo Dennis Cortés cortes, CC0, Wikimedia Commons ; Oculus : Photo Evan-Amos, domaine public, Wikimedia Commons ; Giphy : Photo LoMit, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Beat Saber : Photo Snow64, domaine public, Wikimedia Commons ; Supernatural : Photo Digits.co.uk Images, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons ; MSQRD : Photo Frank Kovalchek from Anchorage, Alaska, USA, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Mapillary : Photo Alexandre Duret-Lutz from Paris, France, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons ; Onavo : Photo Trougnouf, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons