Crashlytics, Answers and Fastlane to become part of Google developer products division
Back in September, it was reported that Salesforce, Disney and Google had shown interest in buying Twitter. Just a few weeks later, and both Google and the House of Mouse had backed off, and three months later, Twitter is without a buyer and slimming down. Vine – its six-second video tool – closed down just yesterday.
But it appears that Google’s interest in Twitter didn’t completely die on 7 October – they have announced the purchase of Fabric, Twitter’s developer platform comprised of mobile tools such as Crashlytics, Answers and Fastlane.
Since launching back in 2014, Twitter says that over 580,000 developers have used the Fabric tools, powering apps on a whopping 2.5bn mobile devices around the world. The deal will see Fabric joining Google’s developer products group alongside Google’s own Firebase.
“When we met the team at Google we quickly realized that our missions are the same – helping mobile teams build better apps, understand their users, and grow their businesses,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Fabric and Firebase operate mobile platforms with unique strengths in the market today. We’re excited to combine these platforms together to make the best mobile developer platform in the world for app teams. Fabric customers: there’s no action you need to take in order to keep using these products.”
The current head of Fabric, Jeff Seibert will not be making the journey, with Rich Paret taking control when it becomes a fully-fledged Google product.
Francis Ma, Firebase’s product manager wrote that “this is a great moment for the industry and a unique opportunity to bring the best of Firebase with the best of Fabric.”
“We’re committed to making mobile app development seamless, so that developers can focus more of their time on building creative experiences.”