In a move designed to improve its position in the market for business analytics and data, Google said Thursday it will acquire analytical data technology company Looker for $2.6 billion in cash.

Looker, which is based in Santa Cruz, will join Google’s Google Cloud business once the deal is completed. It is the first acquisition for Google Cloud Chief Executive Thomas Kurian since he joined the company from Oracle last November. It is also Google’s biggest acquisition since it acquired home-products technology company Nest for $3.2 billion in 2014.

Kurian said the acquisition will help Google Cloud address its customers’ needs to “store, manage, and analyze large quantities of data from a variety of sources,” as they tranSform more of their operations toward cloud-based computing environments. Google expects that addition of Looker will help it provide better analytical tools that customers can use to draw information out of their data for business operations.

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Google Cloud and Looker are not strangers, as the two companies already share more than 350 customers.