Google owner Alphabet buys Fabric from Twitter

Google's owner Alphabet has purchased Fabric from Twitter. This was announced on Friday in a blog on the Fabric.io website and Google's Firebase blog.

Fabric is based on the Crashlytics crash-reporting tool that Twitter acquired for more than $100m in January 2013. It claims to have a reach of 2.5 billion active mobile devices.

Francis Ma, Firebase Product Manager, wrote in the blog: "Fabric will join Google's Developer Product Group, working with the Firebase team. Our missions align closely - help developers build better apps and grow their business. As a popular, trusted tool over many years, we expect that Crashlytics will become the main crash reporting offering for Firebase and will augment the work that we have already done in this area."

"While Fabric was built on the foundation of Crashlytics, the Fabric team leveraged its success to launch a broad set of important tools, including Answers and Fastlane," Ma added.

Ma also wrote, "The integration of Fabric is part of our larger, long-term effort of delivering a comprehensive suite of features for iOS, Android and mobile Web app development."

Twitter had acquired UK-based artificial intelligence company Magic Pony Technology for $150 million in June 2016. It had shut down the Vine short-video sharing application, which had been bought for $30m in October 2012.