This week Google announced on its blogging platform that it has acquired LabPixies, a company that develops lightweight utilities and games for several platforms, including the iPhone, Android and iGoogle, Google’s customisable home page.
Google and Labpixies have been working in collaboration for some time (Labpixies being one of the first developers to create widgets for iGoogle). According to Google’s blog post, Labpixies is joining the Google team because the acquisition will allow both companies to work closer together and allow them to be more innovative. The small team from LabPixies is due to join the Tel Aviv office of Google.
A statement on the site blog of LabPixies says that “The acquisition is an opportunity to learn from each other to bring more apps to users, help developers and improve the overall developer ecosystem.” The company claims that is has 40 million users across its widgets, which includes a Calorie Calculator, Expenses Manager, Phonebook and Calender and several games, including versions of Minesweeper, Hangman and Blackjack.
It’s not clear whether Labpixies will continue to develop applications for platforms other than iGoogle, though they may stick to the OpenSocial platform which is used by most of the main social networks, except for Facebook. OpenSocial is a common API used for social applications across a number of websites.
Labpixies is the eighth company Google has acquired this year and the fourth this month. This number equals the total number of acquisitions made in 2008 and 2009 put together. So far Google has acquired at least 70 companies to aid it in fulfilling its strategies at a total price of $10bn.
