Location Creates its Own Hot Market in Mobile, More Acquisitions
Location-based search engine Local.com has acquired Krillion for $3.5 million to strengthen its position in the market. Krillion too operates a location-based search engine, which aggregates data about products from local stores and put them in a searchable database. It’s the latest in a string of location-based buys and investments, reiterating the sector’s increasing influence in our economy.
Krillion was founded in 2006, and the Mountain View, Calif-based company has raised at least $9.1 million from Leapfrog Ventures and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
Location-based services drive an accelerating trend which managed to influence millions of users in just a few years. This is perhaps especially true for social networking & sharing space, where many new players as well the already established companies are making strides to tap the enormous on-the-go user market. Color, a newly launched media-sharing app which only lets users share files with other nearby users and the more recently launched Twitter synchronization app EventJot are two examples.
Location-based services have spawned from the permeation of mobile devices, but there are certain vulnerabilities the burgeoning industry must still manage. For one, there’s big data breaches, which have gotten a lot of public attention recently. That, of course, and the fact that both iOS and Android constantly record user’s locations and without openly disclosing it. The main concern about iOS is the unsecure method it uses to store the location data it has collected, and when it comes to Android, two San Francisco residents even went as far as filing a lawsuit against Google.
Still, most users find these location tracking techniques quite beneficial whenever it comes to functionality, and we’ve learned a bit on the mechanisms at place behind it – including the importance of WiFi.
From the big data angle, we’ve had a few major developments too. A few short hours ago, Teradeta unveiled the first collaborative online developer community for SQL-MapReduce analytics.
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