Google buys Twitter's Crashlytics and Fabric mobile tools

Twitter divests itself of one of its 53 acquisitions

Twitter has sold its Crashalytics and Fabric crash reporting and analytics tools to Google owner Alphabet.

The tool was based on the Crashlytics acquisition that Twitter picked for more than $100m in January 2013. The sale indicates CEO Jack Dorsey's intent to slim down the company and to either cut costs or raise funds via the closure or sale of non-core assets.

Earlier this week, for example, Twitter shut down the Vine short-video sharing application after it fell out of favour following its acquisition by Twitter. Vine had been bought for $30m in October 2012 when it was, briefly, popular.

The ‘transfer' of Fabric from Twitter to Google was announced today in blog postings on the Fabric.io website, as well as on Google's Firebase 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," said Firebase product manager Francis Ma.

He continued: "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."

He added that Google would share more details about how Fabric and its developers would be integrated with the company in the weeks following the closure of the deal, but hinted that it would form a core part of a long-term Google strategy in mobile apps.

"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," wrote Ma.

Fabric claims to have a reach of 2.5 billion active mobile devices and Twitter claims that it is the market leading software developer kit for app stability and analytics.

Twitter has made more than 50 acquisitions since 2008 in an increasingly vain bid to find a purpose and profitability. Although most of the deals remain undisclosed, the company has spent at least $1.6bn on these acquisitions, most of which don't appear to have amounted to much.

One of its more recent acquisitions was UK-based artificial intelligence company Magic Pony Technology, which it bought for $150 million in June 2016.