Google Acquires Bump

Google has bought Bump for an as of yet undisclosed figure. Bump is a simple tool to help share files between smartphones by tapping the phones together. The Bump team were also responsible for Flock which automatically created geotag-based group photo albums with the uploaders Facebook friends.

The Bump app is a direct competitor of NFC which Google has been championing with its devices for a while. NFC and Bump may have parity in terms of functionality when it comes to smartphones but Bump has the edge for data transfer between smartphone and computers. Bump allows for users to transfer data from a smartphone to a computer by loading the Bump website on your phone and initiating the transfer by pressing spacebar. Being able to share data between smartphone and computer, without the need for any cables or cloud syncing could be handy feature which Google could implement in future services.

With the acquisition of Bump, Google also gets ownership of the Flock app. As mentioned earlier, Flock automatically creates geotag-based, group photo albums. Google+ already has a group photo feature titled "Party Mode". The geo-tagging aspect of Flock should dovetail quite well with Google's existing social media platform photo features.

Source: Bump Blog via Arstechnica

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