Google Agrees to Buy Twitter Unit Called Fabric -- 2nd Update
18 Enero 2017 - 2:56PM
Noticias Dow Jones
By Jack Nicas and Deepa Seetharaman
Alphabet Inc.'s Google agreed to acquire a unit from Twitter
Inc. that runs a tool for developers to make mobile apps, the
latest step in Twitter's efforts to streamline its business.
Twitter said it launched the unit, called Fabric, in 2014 and it
is now used by more than 580,000 mobile developers. The Fabric team
is moving to Google, though Twitter declined to say how many
employees that included.
Google said that it would fold Fabric and its employees into
Google's Developer Product Group and that they would work with its
Firebase team, which also makes a mobile-app tool for developers.
Google bought Firebase in October 2014, the day before Twitter
announced the launch of Fabric.
The companies did not disclose any financial details including
price.
Twitter's sale of Fabric follows its recent closure of its Vine
video app and a 9% reduction of its workforce. Twitter is trimming
its business amid dwindling revenue growth and following the
retreat of several potential acquirers, including Google and
Salesforce.com Inc., this fall.
Fabric was part of Twitter's overall effort to move past its
live feed of tweets and build inroads with app developers at a time
when smartphones and tablets were becoming indispensable. Fabric
combined the services of Twitter acquisitions made in 2013,
including Crashlytics, a mobile crash-reporting tool, and MoPub, an
ad platform.
With Fabric, Google will hold two of the most popular mobile-app
tools among developers, enabling the company to steer developers as
they create apps. Fabric, for instance, is popular with developers
for Apple's iOS software for iPhones. Google can now make it easy
for those developers to create similar versions of their iPhone
apps for the mobile web and Google's Android software.
Fabric can also help boost Google Cloud revenues. Google gives
much of its Firebase tool away free, but it makes money off the
service because many Firebase developers buy computing power and
storage from Google's cloud service. Fabric is likely to follow a
similar model.
Google sees appeal in Fabric's Crashlytics, too. Google said it
plans to replace Firebase's crash-reporting tool, which is one of
the service's most used features, with Crashlytics.
Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com and Deepa Seetharaman
at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 18, 2017 15:41 ET (20:41 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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