Google purchased Bufferbox on Friday, Nov 30, a Canadian locker storage company that has been in business for roughly two years.
Google has reportedly paid more than 417 million for the locker storage provider, but the terms of the deal are not available. The new acquisition could give the search giant the boost it needs to rival Amazon Locker, a service that allows shoppers to pick up a product at a locker unit rather than receive it at home or at the office.
The Canadian startup based in Waterloo, Ontario, offers temporary storage lockers where people can receive online purchases. Bufferbox has a network of storage lockers in the Toronto area, and users sign up for the service and provide a BufferBox shipping address to online retailers. The parcels are delivered to the lockers, and users retrieve them with an access code received via email. Someone else can use the same locker.
The acquisition could be a major step for Google to further expand its e-commerce business, especially since rivals such as Amazon already offer similar services.
According to the Financial Post, a publication briefed on the deal, BufferBox will remain free until the end of the year, although the company eventually planned to charge US$3 or $4 per delivery.
BufferBox will continue to offer its service under Google, the startup said in a blog post on Friday, Nov. 30, on its Web site. Google confirmed the deal as well, but did not provide any details on the acquisition.
"We want to remove as much friction as possible from the shopping experience, while helping consumers save time and money, and we think the BufferBox team has a lot of great ideas around how to do that," a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch.
With this in mind, Google seems to be building a big part of its mobile commerce business out of Waterloo, where plenty of engineering talent leaves the nearby University of Waterloo to work for Apple, Facebook, and a number of other Silicon Valley tech companies and startups.
By the end of next year, BufferBox will reportedly offer 100 of its delivery lockers in the GTA and Hamilton area in Canada. These lockers will be mostly located at transit depots, allowing users to sign up for one-time use delivery.
