What antitrust issues? Google invests in home security provider ADT and partners with regional bank BBVA
Good morning, Term Sheeters. This is Fortune finance reporter Rey Mashayekhi, filling in today for Lucinda.
Google is not letting a recent wave of antitrust sentiment—epitomized by last week’s much-hyped Big Tech congressional hearing—get in the way of its designs.
A pair of announcements on Monday morning indicate just how wide-ranging the Silicon Valley giant’s ambitions remain. Most notably, Google unveiled a $450 million investment in home security provider ADT that picks up a 6.6% stake in one of the most recognizable names in electronic property security.
More important than the financials, the ADT deal gives Google an established vehicle through which it can deploy its Nest line of smart-home electronics and services to as many homes and businesses as possible. Google paid $3.2 billion to acquire Nest in 2014, and since then the brand has competed with Amazon’s Ring and other players in the battle to shape the smart home of the future (the sort of thing you would see in made-for-TV movies 20-plus years ago).
And ADT, which is owned by private equity giant Apollo Global Management, now has the power of Google’s brand and cutting-edge tech behind its own services. Investors certainly took kindly to the deal; ADT’s stock set a new 52-week high on Monday, and closed the day up nearly 57%.
But that wasn’t all going on with the Big G on Monday. There was also the announcement of a collaboration with BBVA USA—the Spanish bank’s American subsidiary team is teaming up with Google Pay to offer new digital banking services, like bank accounts that will couple BBVA’s infrastructure with Google’s front-end user experience.
BBVA is a winner here: A relatively small, regional banking player gets to deploy the Google Pay platform as it seeks to enhance its digital capabilities and keep up with the rapid tech transformation sweeping the banking sector (one undoubtedly accelerated by the pandemic). In a statement, BBVA USA president and CEO Javier Rodriguez Soler said the deal is “fully aligned” with the bank’s goals to “reach more customers with our digital offerings.”
But Google has plenty going for it as well. Tech firms have taken the lead on driving the financial sector’s digital evolution, with everyone from Apple to Facebook to PayPal to Square seeking to beat the banks at their own game when it comes to facilitating how people transact. The BBVA partnership is part and parcel of Google’s strategy; in fact, it’s reportedly only one of eight different partnerships with various banks and credit unions that will soon offer digital services through Google Pay.
It’s all a testament to the grand ambitions of the erstwhile Search Engine That Could—now a trillion-dollar, multinational behemoth that seeks to penetrate endless facets of how we live our lives, antitrust inquiries be damned.
Rey Mashayekhi
Anne Sraders curated today’s Term Sheet.
