American search giant Google Inc. will shut down smartphone file-sharing app Bump at the end of the month just four months after buying it. Google bought startup Bump Technologies in a deal reportedly worth between $30 million and $60 million, The Telegraph said.
Wall Street Journal, citing a blog post by Bump chief executive officer David Lieb, said Bump is shutting down so that its team can continue to work on other projects inside Google. Lieb announced that its photo-aggregating app Flock will also be shutting down.
On January 31, Bump and Flock will be removed from both Apple App Store and Android's Google Play. After that, neither app will work and all user data will be deleted, The Telegraph reported.
Over the coming weeks, users can export their data by opening either app and following instructions. They will then receive an email with a link containing their photos, videos, contacts and other data, the report said.
The Bump application, as explained in the UK newspaper, lets smartphone users easily share data by tapping their devices together. Flock software taps into smartphone location-sensing technology to note when friends are in proximity of one another and lets them contribute to sets of photos reflecting shared experiences, The Telegraph wrote.
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