Bilkent EEE Graduate’s Company Acquired by Google

26 September 2016 Comments Off on Bilkent EEE Graduate’s Company Acquired by Google

anvato-joins-google-post-graphic-1-250-x-140Google recently announced that it has acquired Anvato, a video-streaming company founded in 2007 by Bilkent Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering graduate Alper Turgut.

Anvato will join the Internet search engine giant’s cloud business as Google seeks to boost its public cloud platform. The acquisition is intended to improve the company’s cloud offerings in the area of video delivery.

A number of major media and entertainment firms, including Fox Sports, Univision and NBC Universal, use Anvato’s video platform.

“We are thrilled to bring together Anvato with the scale and power of Google Cloud Platform to provide the industry’s best offering for OTT [over-the-top] and mobile video,” Anvato CEO Alper Turgut said in a blog post. He noted that the move is likely to help Google experience a boost in its cloud business, as Anvato will run its service on the latter’s cloud infrastructure.

Mr. Turgut is a serial technology entrepreneur and business development executive. In his most recent venture, Verkata LLC, he spearheaded the creation of the product vision and brought on board marquee customers that included Motorola, British Telecom, AOL and Virgin Mobile, leading the company to profitability in only two years. Previously he had co-founded Aligo Inc., raising over $24 million from venture funds and strategic partners such as Motorola.