Fly Labs announced on Friday that their company has been acquired by Google to incorporate their simple yet powerful image and video editing technology into Google Photos.
The company describes Google Photos as being a “perfect match” for their technology, and they revealed that their technology will be incorporated into Google Photos moving forward.
(Google Photos is) a perfect match for what we built at Fly Labs, and we’re looking forward to folding our technology into Google Photos. We’ll be pouring the same passion into Google Photos that we poured into Clips, Fly, Tempo and Crop on the Fly.
In lieu of the acquisition, Fly Labs has made all of their apps free. The apps will only be available for the next three months, after which they will be taken down from app stores. “Once the apps are removed from the App Store you will still be able to use them, but they will no longer be available for download”, they said.
David Lieb, Product Lead at Google Photos, welcomed the Fly Labs crew to Google in a message on Twitter, and also announced that there will be “lots to come” for Google Photos users.
3/Video is uniquely powerful for reliving memories, esp when combined with the machine learning of Google Photos. Lots to come!
— David Lieb (@dflieb) November 6, 2015
In a statement on their website, Fly Labs says that their mission has always been “to help people make the most of their photos and videos”. In the past year and a half, their apps have been downloaded more than three million times and more than 20 million videos have been created using their apps.
According to Business Insider, the acquisition comes at a time when Google just recently reported its lowest rate of mergers and acquisitions since 2009.
Google recently revealed that their popular Google Photos service reached 100 million active users. The Fly Labs acquisition illustrate’s Google’s determination to push the service forward even more.
