Google snaps up Twitter’s Fabric mobile app developer platform
Google has confirmed it is to subsume Twitter’s Fabric mobile app developer platform into its own software empire as part of a swoop for assets, including the Crashlytics crash reporting system, Answers mobile app analytics, Digits SMS login system and FastLane development automation system.
Fabric was introduced by Twitter in 2014 to offer developers an enhanced suite of app development tools, growing swiftly to serve apps reaching 2.5bn users built by 580,000 developers.
This reach made it an attractive catch for Google while Twitter benefits from streamlining its resources on core ad and data business in its continuing push to become self-sustaining.
In a statement, Google’s Firebase product manager Francis Ma confirmed that the Fabric team would all migrate to Google, saying: “Today we enter the next chapter for Fabric and are pleased to announce that we’ve signed an agreement for Fabric to be acquired by Google and for our team to join Google’s Developer Products Group, working with the Firebase team. Our missions align closely: help developers build better apps and grow their business.”
Only yesterday that policy saw it shutdown its Vine video service, although reports in TechCrunch suggest that the micro-blogging service will continue to support its Publisher platform, Twitter Kit, Gnip, TweetDeck, MoPub, plus its Public APIs and Ads APIs.