Google acquires mobile app performance startup Pulse.io

Google announced a lot during its I/O 2015 developer conference today, but as is often the case with such big events, a few tidbits slipped through the cracks. One of those tidbits was the fact that the company acquired app performance startup Pulse.io. A Google spokesperson confirmed the acquisition with VentureBeat.

Pulse.io’s product, which shows developers how they can speed up their apps, will remain available to existing customers (with support included) for an undisclosed amount of time. That said, new features will not be added.

According to the announcement on its website, the team will work on incorporating the startup’s technologies into the Google ecosystem. The company’s employees can “think of no better place” to do so “than at the home of Android.”

“Pulse.io started with a vision for how to bring the world of performance monitoring into the mobile age,” the message reads. “Since then, our tools have helped developers ensure their tens of millions of users have a great mobile experience.”

We first covered Pulse.io in June 2013, noting it was building technology to make mobile apps run faster. Founder and CEO Ofer Ronen described his creation at the time as “a stethoscope monitoring your app.” He added that when an app loads or updates slowly, it frustrates the user and leads to an overall poor experience. Pulse.io aims to solve this by seeking out issues and choke points, notifying the developers to respond accordingly.

The news was actually first announced on Wednesday via Pulse.io’s official Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/pulseio/status/603733425422467073

Yet it only started to spread across the social network a few hours later, which is of course when Google made a slew of its biggest announcements of the year. Maybe at Google I/O 2016, we’ll hear news of how Google can help Android developers speed up their apps.

Pulse.io raised at least $1.75 million since its founding. The first $1 million seed was raised in July 2012 and the second $750,000 seed was raised in November 2013.

Google did not disclose the price it paid for Pulse.io, but given the money the startup raised, it was likely pocket change compared to some of the firm’s other purchases.