Google Buys Fly Labs To Boost Google Photos Capability

Google has acquired Fly Labs, a New York-based startup that make apps for editing mobile videos. Fly Labs announced the news on Friday afternoon. The deal will boost Google Photos, giving the photo service more robust media editing tools to help in its rivalry with Instagram and other photo-sharing services. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The company will be joining the team behind Google Photos, the storage service Google launched in May 2015. Fly Labs has four different apps namely: Clips, Fly, Tempo and Crop, each apps was designed to do specific thing related to video. 

In Fly Labs’ announcement post, it claims that its video editing apps help users stay more connected with their memories by “engaging with them creatively.” Fly Labs’ apps have been downloaded more than 3 million times in the last 18 months alone, and created more than 20 million videos. 

Right now, it’s still unclear how quickly Fly Labs can integrate its technology into Google Photos, but we could expect more features and capabilities to come. 

Google Photos has continued to grow over the past few months. Since its launch in May 2015, Google Photos has become one of the industry’s most reliable and beloved storage solutions. In just five months of service, Google Photos’ monthly active users have grown to more than 100 million. It beat Instagram in just two and a half years in reaching that number. The service provides users with unlimited high quality storage, where you can upload full resolution versions. But what appeals to people most about the service is how easy it is to use, just sign in using your Google account and set up an automatic photo uploads then you’re good to go. 

Image credit: Wired