Viewdle
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Viewdle was a Ukrainian facial recognition company founded in 2006, originating as an ex-military university laboratory project in computer vision. It morphed into a startup building face, object and gesture recognition technology for mobile devices — including a SocialCamera Android app and face-recognition SDKs — and won gold at the Le Web 2008 startup competition after launching at TechCrunch 40 in 2007. It was backed by Best Buy, Research in Motion's BlackBerry Partners Fund, Qualcomm and Anthem Venture Partners, with headquarters moved to San Jose, California and 36 employees.
02 / Viewdle FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Viewdle did not fail in the classic sense: it was acquired, with Google's Motorola Mobility announcing the deal in October 2012 for a reported $30-45 million. Its standalone existence ended with the acquisition, and in 2014 Google closed the company outright, moving most of the Ukrainian team to the Motorola Mobility US office and the ATAP group. The Ukrainian division was wound down by October 2014.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Viewdle was founded.
- Operations ended
Viewdle ended operations.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
In October 2012 Motorola Mobility, under Google, announced it had acquired Viewdle for a reported $30-45 million; Viewdle began preparing for closure immediately after the deal was finalized.
- 02
Most of Viewdle's team moved to the United States and joined Motorola Mobility, which Google owned until the end of 2014.
- 03
After relocation to the Sunnyvale office, the Viewdle team joined the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group under Regina Dugan.
- 04
In 2014 Google closed the company; the Ukrainian division's head was tasked with closing it by October 2014.