Google acquires team and tech from Web app builder Divshot

The Divshot team will be joining Firebase, and Divsot products will shut down in December

Google is in a constant battle with Amazon and Microsoft to get developers onto its platform.

Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are strong competitors, so Google has upped its game a little bt by acquiring Divshot, an HTML5 web hosting platform tailored for performance and developer productivity.

No financial terms of the deal, which was announced in a blog post on Tuesday, were disclosed, but it was revealed that the team will be joining the Firebase team at Google, the company's developer-focused app development platform, where it will incorporating its technology as well.

Founded at Startup Weekend Kansas City in April 2012,  Divshot was initially based on Bootstrap, the popular open source front-end framework that was developed by Twitter.

Divshot is a visual builder for web application interfaces that brings together the simplicity of a drag-and-drop mockup tool with the polish of professional, hand-coded HTML and CSS. The idea was to help professional developers and designers work faster and spend less time on throwaway wireframes and mockups. The apps designed with Divshot work on any device and browser.

The company was a graduate of the Launchpad LA accelerator.

The reason that Divshot was a good fit for Google because, "Both teams share a passion for creating fantastic developer experiences, and now we’re moving forward together toward that common goal," Michael Bleigh, co-founder and CEO of Divshot, wrote.

“As a cofounder of Divshot, I’m excited to bring the best parts of Divshot’s technology to Firebase Hosting."

Divshot and Firebase are together launching a brand new Firebase command-line interface today with a local static web server powered by Divshot’s open-source Superstatic library. Users will now be able to develop locally with all of their rewrites, redirects, and other Firebase Hosting options.

The company have a history together, having previously teamed up when Firebase sponsored Divshot’s Static Showdown hackathon and was used by more than 50 percent of the developers who participated.

Going forward, Divshot will be shutting down its existing products and services on Monday, December 14. For existing Divshot customers, it has set up a detailed migration guide to help them easily transition to Firebase Hosting.

Divshot hasd raised $1.8 million in funding, most recently a $1.1 million round in March of 2013. Investors included Rincon Venture Partners, 500 Startups, Daher Capital, Floodlight Ventures, Cooley LLP, Drummond Road Capital, and Eric Hammond.

This is Google's eleventh acquisition so far in 2015.

It previously purchased kids app-maker Launchpad Toys; photo-backup service Odysee; mobile payments app Softcard; Facebook marketing tool Toro; VR companies Tilt Brush and Thrive Audio; and smart scheduling app Timeful. It bought mobile app performance service Pulse.io in May, and Pixate, a company that enables dynamic user interfaces for native mobile applications, in July, and ebook company Oyster in September.

It's most recent purchase was of Jibe Mobile, a messaging startup that builds cloud communications for mobile operators, late last month.

VatorNews has reached out to Google and Divshot for further comment on the news. We will update this story if we learn more.

(Image source: twitter.com)