Google Agrees to Buy Twitter Unit Called Fabric -- Update
January 18 2017 - 2:33PM
Dow Jones News
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.
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.
Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com and Deepa Seetharaman
at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 18, 2017 14:18 ET (19:18 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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