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Google is discontinuing the Bump data transfer app in the Google Play store only four months after the company acquired Bump in a $40 million deal last September.
The shuttering of the project was unveiled in a Dec. 31 post by David Lieb, the CEO and co-founder of Bump, on the Bump Blog.
“Back in September, we announced that the Bump team was joining Google to continue our work of helping people share and interact with one another using mobile devices,” wrote Lieb. “We are now deeply focused on our new projects within Google, and we’ve decided to discontinue Bump and Flock [a photo-sharing app]. On January 31, 2014, Bump and Flock will be removed from the App Store and Google Play. After this date, neither app will work, and all user data will be deleted.”
The Bump app allows users to move files from smartphones to computers and vice versa by “bumping” the spacebar with the device to make the transfer, or by bumping their smartphones together. Flock is an app that lets users easily share photos with friends on their devices.
When Bump was acquired by Google last year, a Google spokesperson told eWEEK that the “Bump team has demonstrated a strong ability to quickly build and develop products that users love, and we think they’ll be a great fit at Google.”
Bump users will have until Jan. 31 to save and download all of their data that they have in the app, according to the company. “We’ve taken much care to make sure that you can retain any data you have in Bump and Flock,” wrote Lieb. “At any point in the next 30 days, simply open either app and follow the instructions for exporting your data. You’ll then receive an email with a link containing all of your data (photos, videos, contacts, etc.) from Bump or Flock.”
Google did not respond to an eWEEK inquiry on Jan. 2 seeking additional comments about the closure and why the move is being made.
In his post, however, Lieb said that the Bump team will now be working on other products and innovations.
“Over the years, we’ve been inspired and humbled by the millions of people who have used Bump and Flock,” he wrote. “Your feedback, enthusiasm, and support have brought much meaning to our work, and we want to thank you all for that. In many ways, Bump was a revolutionary product that inspired many subsequent advances and helped push the world forward. We hope our new creations at Google will do the same.”
The Bump acquisition by Google was lauded with excitement by Lieb at that time. “Our mission at Bump has always been to build the simplest tools for sharing the information you care about with other people and devices,” he wrote at that time. “We strive to create experiences that feel like magic, enabled behind the scene with innovations in math, data processing, and algorithms. So we couldn’t be more thrilled to join Google, a company that shares our belief that the application of computing to difficult problems can fundamentally change the way that we interact with one another and the world.”
That forward progress on the project has apparently been terminated for now at least.