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Not quite the $15 billion they spent on Whatsapp last month, but still more than the $1.1 billion they spent on Instagram.  The speculation is for grand universes of virtual reality news feeds, virtual reality sharing of private UAV flights, but the reality is probably more down to Earth.  It's a play on injecting advertizing into the video feeds that go into the Occulus Rift, with some algorithm that tries to make it relevant to the content of the video feeds.  The history of Facebook acquisitions has been pretty disastrous.  Instragram went absolutely nowhere.

Occulus VR, like most multi billion dollar startup acquisitions, has never shipped a product.  The closest they ever got was a development kit.  Now development kit 1 is discontinued & they're still planning a version 2, someday.


The big question when reading about these escalating buyout prices is how much Google is going to pay for 3D Robotics.  It'll undoubtedly be the largest robotics buyout ever.  Someone actually sat down & made a list of Google's acquisitions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google

It's interesting to note that the entire Android universe started out as a $50 million acquisition while the $12 billion Motorola acquisition went down like a lead weight. 

To save themselves from looking like the complete idiots they are, Google doesn't normally disclose their buyout prices, but 3D Robotics will probably be sold for $30 billion.  Before that can happen, 3D Robotics needs to stop shipping products, of course.


What will Google change about 3D Robotics?  Arducopter will be rewritten in Java, require 8 gigs of RAM, 64 gig of flash, & a quad core 2Ghz ARM.  There will be mandatory upgrades every 3 days to cripple the offline map functionality & create more annoying, bloated user interfaces that fill 1/2 the screen with search dialogs & frames.

Flights will require loading 1 gigabyte of javascript to your remote control & watching a 5 minute commercial about adsense, which you may click through after 5 seconds, sometimes.  FPV video will have banner ads covering 1/2 the screen which may be closed, only to reappear when the wind changes direction.  Flights over copyrighted property will result in immediate motor cutoff & incineration of your arducopter.