Diane Greene and Bebop to help Google take on the cloud business

Alphabet, Google's umbrella company, announced that it paid $380.2m to acquire Bebop, a start-up founded by VMware Co-founder Diane Greene. As part of the acquisition, Greene is now in charge of Google's cloud business, she also sits on Alphabet's Board of Directors. The addition of Greene means that Google has a knowledgeable, enterprise software veteran to help take on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in the cloud business. The acquisition shows Google is willing to invest in cloud technology and diversify from its traditional web search and online advertising expertise.       

Google’s umbrella company, Alphabet, today disclosed that it paid $380.2 million to buy Bebop, the startup from VMware cofounder and former chief executive Diane Greene.

Greene, who sits on Alphabet’s board of directors and is now in charge of Google’s cloud businesses as a result of the acquisition, isn’t keeping a huge percentage of the money Bebop is receiving as a result of the deal. In fact, she’s giving it up to charity.

“Diane Greene exchanged 7,244,150 shares of bebop stock for 200,729 shares of Alphabet Class C Capital Stock at $740.39 each in the Merger, plus cash for fractional shares,” Alphabet said in the filing it submitted today to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “Ms. Greene intends to donate the shares exchanged to a donor advised fund.” The total comes out to some $148.6 million.

Multiple reports have indicated that following the acquisition, Bebop is continuing to work on its “development platform that makes it easy to build and maintain enterprise applications,” as Google chief executive Sundar Pichai described it in his blog post on the deal. And sure enough, today’s filing notes that Bebop “was merged into an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.” In other words, it hasn’t been subsumed into the greater Google.

But Greene’s new role at Google means that the company well known for web search and online advertising now has a seasoned enterprise software veteran who knows how to sell to big companies. That’s important as Google takes on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in the cloud business. Time will tell how much traction the Google public cloud can gain in 2016 and beyond — and how much Bebop turns into a major business within the greater Alphabet.