Google Agrees to Buy Twitter Unit Called Fabric -- Update

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 [e-mail] and Deepa Seetharaman at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 18, 2017 14:18 ET (19:18 GMT)

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