Google acquires Cronologics to help grow Android Wear platform

Google announced a promising looking update for Android Wear at its I/O developer conference in May. The company had said that the roll out to all users would happen later this year. However back in September we heard that those plans were delayed in favour of multiple developer previews . By doing so, Google is making sure that the new update is feature rich and gets a proper feedback from potential users before it is rolled out next year.

In the meantime, it has acquired a company called Cronologics which is a smartwatch OS startup that made the Amazon Alexa-equipped CoWatch. According to Cronologics, it will join the Android Wear team at Google to help grow the portfolio of watches running the system.

https://twitter.com/leorstern/status/808402472842629126?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

“We see strong alignment with Android Wear’s mission and look forward to working with our new colleagues at Google to continue pushing the frontier of wearable technology and smartwatches with Android Wear 2.0 and beyond” said Cronologics in a post .

The startup began in 2014 when ex-Google employees Lan Roche, Leor Stern, and John Lagerling launched the company.  They made the CoWatch, which was the first smartwatch to have Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant onboard. Users could speak to the watch and ask it to do things like call-order pizza, book a cab and things one can do using Alexa on an Amazon device like the Echo. The CoWatch is a part of the Indiegogo campaign and has raised an impressive $300,000 (Rs 1.9 crores).

Cronologics will probably help in improving the Android Wear platform as CoWatch runs on the company’s own OS called Cronologics OS. While it isn’t Android Wear, it is fully compatible with Android and iOS devices. It does look appealing having features like interchangeable watchfaces, support for apps, activity tracking with a built-in heart rate monitor, voice commands and so on.