Google Swallows Up Firm Run by Former Apple Employees
Search behemoth Google continues its acquisitions, and this time it’s an obscure company run by former employees of Apple.AppleInsider is reporting on Google’s latest acquisition, which they refer to as “a little-known firm spearheaded by former Apple employees who are working on technology no one knows about.” The company’s name is Agnilux, a startup based in San Jose, California whose ranks include several former P.A. Semi employees who departed from that company after Apple consumed the chipmaker nearly two years ago for a whopping $278 million.Included in the rank and file at Agniluk are Mark Hayter, Olof Johansson, Todd Broch and Dan Dobberpuhl, the latter of which is P.A. Semi’s original founder and chief executive, believed to be the most recent Apple departure. The remaining members come from TiVo and Cisco.An acquisition of this type might normally fail to be very newsworthy, except that it seems no one really knows exactly what it is that Agnilux does in the first place. There’s very little information on the company in public record, and no one can seem to figure out why Google wanted the company or what it intends to do with it.A Google spokesperson did indeed confirm the acquisition to AppleInsider, but provided no further details. The Agnilux website was taken offline last week, but even when live it offered little in the way of information other than a street address and a brief story behind the company’s name (derived from agni -- Sanskrit for fire and lux, Latin for light).AppleInsider theorizes that Agnilux may have been developing chip technology “that could better position Google to compete against Apple in the mobile space,” especially considering the company’s former P.A. Semi DNA.The New York Times attempted to find out more about Agnilux earlier this year, but discovered that the personnel there are just as tight-lipped as their former employers. “We want to make a splash,” Hayter said during an interview back in February. “We don’t want our manufacturer to take our intellectual property before we’re ready.”Sometime later, an unnamed Agnilux employee later told the Times that the company is working on “some kind of server, and that the company has a partnership in place with Cisco.” That would certainly be of interest to Google, who already operates hundreds of thousands of servers built in-house.
http://www.maclife.com/article/news/google_swallows_firm_run_former_apple_employees
