Technology to track enemies, powers Israel’s move into commercial prediction software.
“Big data was not a brand 10 years ago, but it was already there in intelligence organizations,” says Elik Ber, a former military intelligence officer now working for Meidata, a business research company. “Now when a consumer company wants to know who bought their product everywhere in the world, they’re facing the same kind of challenge.”
A few weeks ago, Google acquired the Israeli online mapping service Waze for $1.1 billion. The acquisition recalls the 1998 deal in which America Online bought the instant messaging program ICQ from Israeli startup Mirabilis for about $400 million. ICQ gained great popularity.