Social media giant Facebook (News - Alert) recently acquired Israeli startup Onavo, a mobile data analytics solutions provider. The announcement did not include details about the amount agreed upon. Reports suggest that Facebook paid somewhere between $100 million and -$200 million for the startup.

As part of the deal, 30 of Onavo's employees will join Facebook, but they will remain in Israel and operate a research and development unit in the country.

In a statement it sent to TechCrunch, Facebook said, "Onavo will be an exciting addition to Facebook. We expect Onavo's data compression technology to play a central role in our mission to connect more people to the Internet, and their analytic tools will help us provide better, more efficient mobile products."

Back in 2011, Onavo introduced its 'data-miser' app for iOS, which was followed by an Android (News - Alert) version in 2012. Far too often users of multi-gigabyte mobile data allowances find themselves out of data quickly especially if they are streaming videos, or doing other data-heavy activities. Onavo's addressed those issues with its app. The app compressed data using its own proprietary system, saving as much as 80 percent of the load.

This technology will most likely help Facebook's Internet.org scheme launched back in August of this year, which aims to connect “the next five billion" by developing ways of reducing the cost of Internet access, and also by building infrastructure to bring the Web to developing countries.

Onavo also developed Insights, a market intelligence service. It shows market share and active usage of apps. When it was first released, Insights was a premium product, but earlier this year it was released as a freemium model, releasing some data at absolutely no cost. 

Onavo Founder and CEO Guy Rosen and CTO Roi Tiger wrote in a blog post that their technology would become “an integral part of Internet.org, established earlier this year by Facebook, along with Ericsson (News - Alert), MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, and Samsung, to bring the power of the web to the billion or so who have no Internet access at all – or whose access is very limited, with online connections measured in kilobytes, not gigabytes.”

"As you know, Facebook and other mobile technology leaders recently launched Internet.org, formalizing Facebook's commitment to improving access to the Internet for the next five billion people — this is a challenge we're also passionate about," Rosen and Tiger added.

Onavo is the third Israeli company Facebook has purchased. The social media giant also acquired Snaptu, which revamps websites into easy-to-use mobile apps, and Face.com, which specializes in facial recognition and offers a free REST API.


Edited by Rachel Ramsey