Best 7 Acquisitions Made by Alphabet Inc. in 2015

4. Softcard

Total score – 11

Softcard was a joint venture between giant telcos AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The mobile payments platform was used to allow people to pay for items at stores and various restaurants with their smartphones after storing their credit or debit card information in the app. This may sound quite familiar to you if you’ve ever used or at least researched Google Wallet – it’s the same principle.

The acquisition raised quite a few eyebrows across the world as people wondered what the company was going to do with Softcard since it has its own similar service, but in the end it turned out to be one of the best acquisitions made by Alphabet Inc. in 2015.  While neither of the companies went into too many details, it is suspected that patents owned by Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile for Softcard were at the center of the deal. While Google is not known for using such patents to sue others, it has been known to use them to protect itself from other lawsuits, including those fired up by Apple.

There’s also the fact that the three telcos have blocked Google Wallet from the devices they sold in order to protect their own payment service.  Through this deal, Google opens its own door towards enabling more people to use Wallet.