Bump, one of the most popular mobile app for iOS and Android has been acquired by Google. The announcement was made in their official blog today.
Bump launched for the mobile devices, letting users share certain information by just bumping the phones before even NFC came into existence on mobile devices. Today, the company is joining Google, indicating that Google has got some plans for their upcoming versions of Android.
The company raised over $20 million in funding (It was funded by Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, Felicis Ventures, SV Angel, Andreesen Horowitz and other popular Angel investors) and also shot to fame with its innovative approach towards sharing files between devices. Just like what any acquisition would do to an app, we thought the app would be killed. But the company’s CEO and Co-Founder, David Lieb assures that the apps (Bump and Flock) will still be alive on the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.
Talking about the acquisition, David writes:
Our mission at Bump has always been to build the simplest tools for sharing the information you care about with other people and devices. We strive to create experiences that feel like magic, enabled behind the scene with innovations in math, data processing, and algorithms. So we couldn’t be more thrilled to join Google, a company that shares our belief that the application of computing to difficult problems can fundamentally change the way that we interact with one another and the world.
The Terms of the deal and other details were not disclosed by the company. But it is interesting that Google made this acquisition.
Flock on the other hand, is yet another interesting application which Google might have considered during the acquisition. The app takes advantage of the GPS sensor, to determine your location, match it with your Facebook friends’ profiles to know which of your friends are nearby, and allows you to create a collaborative photo album in seconds.
If Google was aiming at Flock from Bump Technologies, then all that I can see is Google+ getting really good updates on the mobile, which would let you create collaborative albums and share photos with the help of people around you. We will have to wait until some more information comes in. This is competition which is working out between big internet companies now. Google is definitely making the game tougher for Facebook and Dropbox with these acquisition, since both the services have similar features when it comes to sharing photos.