Google acquires mobile app developer Bitspin

Tech giant Google has acquired Swiss app developer Bitspin, developer of alarm clock app Timely.

Timely synchronises alarms across all of a user’s devices and was developed by a small team who previously studied computer science at ETH Zurich, the city where Bitspin is currently based.

“We’re thrilled to announce that Bitspin is joining Google, where we’ll continue to do what we love: building great products that are delightful to use,” the firm said in a statement.

The firm added that Timely will continue to work for new and existing users as it always has.

Google has been making waves in the mobile application space in recent weeks. Last month, the firm was reported to be in the process of coordinating mobile development for native Chrome apps. According to a GitHub repository led by a software developer at Google, the company is in the process of putting together a toolkit that will help developers create hybrid Chrome / native apps running on Android and iOS.

The firm is also developing an open hardware platform which would allow users to create, modular customised smartphones.Project Ara is led by Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, and promises “to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software”. The aim is to create a third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation and substantially compress development timelines.

The acquisitions made by Google last year also included cloud computing firm Talaria Technologies, GPS navigation software firm Waze, mobile software developer Bump, gesture recognition technology developer Flutter and a host of robotics firms.