Google Acquires LabPixies Rumored For Up To $25 Million [Google Buys Israeli Widget Maker LabPixies In Its Latest String of Acquisitions]

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Google announced today that it has acquired Israeli mobile and widgets developer LabPixies. Financial details were not disclosed, but the deal is rumored to be worth anywhere between $15 million to up to $25 million. This is quite outstanding considering that the startup company only raised $1 million in its first round of funding from Israeli angel investors in 2008.

LabPixies is just one of the small startups the popular search engine giant has recently purchased adding to Google’s growing list of newly acquired companies, including Agnilux, Plink, Picnik and Aardvark.

It is reported that Google hopes to vamp up its mobile and web applications in the upcoming months. LabPixies already makes widgets for Google’s Android and were one of the first companies to create gadgets for iGoogle.

Widgets and apps created by LabPixies already include games, calendars, news feeds and utilities for platforms like the iPhone and Android. It’s believed that iGoogle’s gadget games may be generating as many as one billion impressions a month.

Don Loeb, a member of the iGoogle team said that the group is “thrilled to announce the acquisition of Labpixies” and adds that, “We are looking forward to working with Labpixies to develop great Web apps and leverage their knowledge and expertise to help developers and improve the ecosystem overall.”

This positive buzz is also reflected in LabPixies’ blog post today:

We started LabPixies to create a truly personalized online experience and develop fun widgets that people find useful every day. Working at Google will help us scale to more users as well as giving our team greater opportunities. Google and LabPixies teams have worked on many projects together including the launch of global OpenSocial based gadgets. The acquisition is an opportunity to learn from each other to bring more apps to users, help developers and improve the overall developer ecosystem.

LabPixies will be based in Google’s Tel Aviv office and will assist iGoogle’s operations across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

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