 "Google picks up Bump Technologies, company behind sharing apps Bump and Flock")
Google has picked up yet another startup. This time, it is the wireless-sharing application Bump that got the Mountain View based company excited. Reports suggest that the deal was pegged somewhere around $35 million.
For those not in the know, Bump is an application for Android and iOS platforms that facilitates exchange of photographs and contacts by simply bumping two phones together. Interestingly, while bumping for exchange of data is usually supposed to be the USP of near-field communication, or NFC, Bump does not rely on it. The application also lets you send data from your phone to your computers.
Acquired
In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Bump’s CEO David Lieb wrote that things will remain the same for the application, at least for now. “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,” he wrote.
Bump has been one of the more well-known data transfer applications for both Android and iOS. It’s the eighth most popular free application of all time on the Apple App Store and has been downloaded over 125 million times.
In May last year, it was reported that Bump users had shared over 600 million photos with each other. The company also launched a new iOS and Android application called Flock that allowed users to share images with friends through collaborative albums. For now, Lieb says, both Bump and Flock will work “as they always have” but he also ominously asks users to “stay tuned for future updates”.
Bump Technologies has already raised $20 million in funding, so the figure of $35 million in sales seems to be a cushy one for the company. While Google is not keen on shutting its services down for now, Bump’s technology could be put to good use in the Google offices, we believe.
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