Aloqa CEO Sanjeev Agrawal took a risk when he bailed on Google where he was Head of Product Marketing, but the gamble seems to have paid off. Agrawal left for TellMe, which was bought by Microsoft for $800M in 2007. In 2008, he took over as CEO of the Germany-founded firm Aloqa. Now Motorola has bought Aloqa GmbH, and Agrawal will be VP there. No one is saying how much Motorola paid Aloza.

Aloqa develops mobile applications for smartphone platforms, including Google's Android, and says that more than one million users have downloaded its software.

Aloqa proactively notifies users about interesting places, services, events, and people around them. Instead of searching, users can just look at their phone and see which of their favorite locals, hotspots, services, bargains, and friends are nearby.

Motorola has said the outfit will be merged into its Motorola Mobility handset business which will be spun out from the rest of the company early next year.

Aloqa was founded in Munich by a couple of German pals Johannes Martens and Dr. Georg Treu. Aloqa raised $1.5M in Series A from angel investors and Wellington Partners about a year ago.

The deal seems like a good one for Motorola. Aloqa is not a niche service but one that phone users can use every day and it can be used by nearly all users. For Aloqa surely they got a nice payout given that they raised only $1.5M. But now they will have to work for Motorola.

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