Google acquires Twitter's mobile app developer platform

New York, Jan 19: In a bid to help developers build better apps and grow their business, Google has acquired Twitter's mobile app developer platform Fabric.

Twitter launched Fabric as a modular SDK in 2014 to allow developers improve their apps, and it now serves apps reaching 2.5 billion users built by 580,000 developers.

Fabric will join Google's Developer Product Group working with Firebase team.

"The integration of Fabric is part of our larger, long-term effort of delivering a comprehensive suite of features for iOS, Android and mobile web app development," said Francis Ma, Firebase Product Manager, Google, in a blog post on Wednesday.

Ma believes that Crashlytics will become the main crash reporting offering for Firebase and will augment the work that they have already done in this area.

While Fabric was built on the foundation of Crashlytics, the Fabric team leveraged its success to launch a broad set of important tools, including Answers and Fastlane.

"When the acquisition is complete, Google will begin providing Fabric, Crashlytics, Answers, and associated beta products," added Rich Paret, Vice President of Engineering and General Manager of Fabric.

During the transition period, Digits, the SMS authentication services, will be maintained by Twitter.