Google acquires drawElements to help them tackle Android fragmentation
Adding to Google’s ongoing business ventures comes the acquisition of drawElements, a 3D graphics firm based out of Finland that provides graphics analytics across various hardware. Google’s Android department has long been looking for new ways at combating the still very real “fragmentation issue” — the cold reality that comes with dealing with such a wide variation of hardware — so the taking of drawElements under its wing sounds like a match made in heaven.
While it’s true there are a variety of software benchmarks to help test performance, but drawElements work goes beyond that. drawElements’ Quality Program software (dEPQ) is able to product quality, providing developers with detailed comparisons across hardware to find out exactly what about the hardware was causing incompatibility. With this information, it doesn’t seem too far fetched to see how Google could later set basic hardware guidelines OEMs can adhere to in order to ensure everything works properly with the latest or future versions of Android.
Of course, drawElements sounded more than excited about the move, announcing on their site:
“We’re excited to announce that we’re joining Google. Thanks to everyone who has helped us along the way; we’re grateful for your support. Over the next few months, we’ll be working with our colleagues on the Android team to incorporate some of our technology into the compatibility test suite. Stay tuned!”
Although specific terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, expect the dollar amount to hit somewhere around the 8 figure mark.
[via ArticStartup]