Google Shutting Down Bump & Flock Apps Not Long After Acquisitions
Bump, an information-sharing app, and photo sharing app Flock, will cease to exist January 31st, though they may live on within other Google products.
Google will soon close two of its most recent app purchases.
Google bought Bump and Flock in September for an undisclosed sum, but the apps will be discontinued from 31 January.
Bump was started five years ago and allowed users to pass contact details and other information by bumping their two devices together. Originally available for iOS and Android, the technology, which combined GPS and Bluetooth with motion sensing, later became available for desktop machines.
Flock, the younger of the two apps, was designed to crowdsource photos from friends who all attended the same event to create a single photo album for an occasion.
While Bump was something of a fad at the time as new technology, Flock never really found its feet as part of the wave of photo sharing apps that have surfaced the past 18 months.
Speaking on the company blog, Bump CEO Dave Lieb told users, “Over the years, we’ve been inspired and humbled by the millions of people who have used Bump and Flock. Your feedback, enthusiasm, and support has brought much meaning to our work, and we want to thank you all for that.”
He explained that users will be able to download their data from the website over the next month, before adding, “In many ways, Bump was a revolutionary product that inspired many subsequent advances and helped push the world forward. We hope our new creations at Google will do the same.”
Google has not revealed what these new creations will be, but it is safe to speculate that a honed version of the Bump technology will be involved, while Flock might well become part of the increased Google Plus integration in Android and Picasa.
This article was originally published on the Inquirer.
