Google announced the acquisition of Pixate, a mobile application prototyping service, on Tuesday. Pixate staff will now team up with Google’s design group, according to a blog post. Pixate, as a result, will offer its studio product for free, and is substantially dropping the cost of its cloud service.
Pixate Studio now a free service
The firm mentioned in its ‘Frequently Asked Question’ segment that the service will continue as a standalone product, with no hurdles and withdrawal of support. This can be seen as an initiative from Google to support further Android app development. Prototype apps for the iOS and other platforms will be continued without any interruptions, and new members can still sign up.
However, there is one change that customers can expect to see: Pixate Studio is now completely free, and Pixate cloud will now only cost $5 per designer per month, or $50 per designer per year.
In a blog post, Pixate CEO Paul Colton said he is very proud to announce the merger of Pixate with Google. Colton said the company was started three years ago with an intention to “make designing and prototyping native mobile applications easy and more accessible.” According to Colton, early adopters of the app gave their useful feedback to help design tools and services to fulfill the needs of designers, who are looking to turn their ideas into reality. The CEO further mentioned that today Pixate has all sort of companies as clients, ranging from single person start-ups to global corporations.
Eighth acquisition for Google in 2015
Pixate is the storehouse of some really big ideas, according to Colton, which he thinks can be presented to the design community at scale with the help of Google. Pixate has become an inseparable part of the workflow for tens of thousands of designers, the CEO said, adding they “are excited about expanding our mission at Google to reach millions of product teams worldwide.”
Formed in 2012, Pixate assisted designers in crafting mobile interactions and detailed interactive native prototypes without the need of any code. Pixate raised $3.8 million in funding from Accel Partners in 2013. The company also launched a kickstarter campaign to raise $25,000, but instead it raised more than $61,000.
Including Pixate, Google has made eight acquisitions this year. The internet company acquired photo-backup service Odysee; VR companies Tilt Brush and Thrive Audio; mobile payments app Softcard; Facebook marketing tool Toro; kids app-maker Launchpad Toys and smart scheduling app Timeful. It most recently bought mobile app performance service Pulse.io in May.
