• PE Hub et al., Wednesday, April 21, 2010 12:45 PM

Google's acquired another startup named Agnilux, but no one's quite sure why or what the firm actually does.

"We have not yet been able to confirm pricing terms," writes PE Hub, which broke the story, "although assume it must have been a big deal to convince the Agnilux founders to shun the strategic investment -- or traditional venture capital -- routes so soon after founding."

Meanwhile, Bloomberg is reporting that Google is in talks to acquire ITA Software Inc., a maker of travel programs used by companies including Orbitz Worldwide Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Citing people familiar with the talks, Bloomberg said ITA could be asking for about $1 billion.

Back to Agnilux -- founded by some former Apple employees, "Agnilux allegedly makes a server chip, but no one has been able to confirm this," writes eWeek. "It could be that Google will take the alleged server chip work Agnilux has done and use it as the processing engine for its alleged tablet."

Regarding the clandestine startup, Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal writes: "The best we can tell is that it was started by former Apple and Cisco employees, it might have had something to do with servers, and that they were keeping tight lipped until they were ready to 'make a splash.'"

The New York Times attempted to profile Agnilux back in February within the context of Apple's A4 chip, i.e., the iPad's processing engine. Apparently, Agnilux CEO Amarjeet Gill and COO Mark Hayter joined Apple in 2008 when it acquired P.A. Semi to help develop the A4.

As Digital Daily notes, the Agnilux acquisition reinforces the perception that Google isn't beyond buying companies simply to interrupt Apple's strategy. Under the headline, "Agnilux? Is That Latin for Annoy Steve Jobs?" the blog suggests a numbers of possibilities, including the idea that "Google might have some mobile aspirations here as well."

More broadly, Google and Apple are now "clearly" at odds with one another, notes TechCrunch. "The iPhone and Android are already at war ... and soon, the two will be at war in ads (AdSense vs. iAds) and portable computing (iPads versus Chrome OS netbooks) ... And leading up to those wars, both have been making some interesting hires and acquisitions."

Read the whole story at PE Hub et al. »