Google buys popular polling service Polar for Google+, will shut it down this year

Google today announced that it has acquired polling startup Polar and plans to shut the service down by 2015.

As Polar fades away, the Polar team will be assigned to make Google+ “as beautiful and simple to use as possible, especially on mobile devices,” according to Google+ engineering vice president Dave Besbris.

Google made it clear in its announcement that this was an acqui-hire. And Polar founder Luke Wroblewski, a well-respected interface designer, clearly played a major role in the deal. “I’m thrilled to welcome Luke Wroblewski and the talented Polar team to Google,” wrote Besbris in an announcement on Google+.

As for existing Polar users, the company shares on its blog that it will “keep its publisher tools available until the end of 2014” and has “built a simple way to download and save an archive of your Polar polls and data.”

It’s not yet clear if polling features will make their way to Google+ following the acquisition: Google declined to comment on the matter.