Michal Ždanský In September of last year, Google bought the startup Bump. This company was responsible for two popular apps on iOS and Android for sharing photos and files in general, Bump and Flock. After the announcement of the acquisition, it seemed that the service would continue to operate, neither Bump nor Google issued a statement about the end of the services, it only came at the turn of the year.
Bump announced the inevitable end of both services on its Blog while the company wants to focus on future projects:
We are now fully focused on our new projects at Google and have decided to shut down Bump and Flock. On January 31, 2014, Bump and Flock will be removed from the App Store and Google Play. After this date, not a single application will work and all user data will be deleted.
But we don't care about your data, so we've made sure you can keep it from Bumb and Flock. During the next 30 days, you can open one of the apps at any time and follow the instructions to export your data. You will then receive an email with a link containing all your data (photos, videos, contacts, etc.) from Bump or Flock.
The Bump app first appeared in 2009 and allowed data (such as photos or contacts) to be transferred between phones by physically touching them, similar to what we see with NFC, but using different technologies. This feature also appeared in the PayPal app for a while. This feature then gave rise to Bump's separate payment application, but later the developers focused on photo sharing with the Flock application, which was able to put photos from different sources (devices) into a single album.
Flock and Bump aren't the first apps killed by a Google acquisition. Earlier, Google discontinued the multi-protocol IM service Meebo or the development of the Sparrow email client after the acquisition.
Google is evil…
It is getting into the position Microsoft was in about ten years ago…