FlexyCore Absorbed By Google

Google today acquired French startup firm FlexyCore in a deal reportedly worth $23 million. It’s unclear yet precisely how FlexyCore’s technology will be integrated with Android, but it’s a safe bet to assume the intent will be to make the mobile OS run more smoothly.

FlexyCore is perhaps best known for its DroidBooster app, which has already been removed from the Google Play store. The app claimed to be able to increase the speed of any system running Android tenfold, and while that’s probably somewhat of a stretch, the app apparently did enough to convince Google that a buyout was prudent.

The deal was first reported by French outlet L’Expansion. While Google will absorb FlexyCore, the company will retain its team of engineers, which has already been incorporated into the Android team.

Mountain View confirmed the buyout earlier, tweeting “The FlexyCore team has strong expertise in building software to optimize Android device performance, and we think they’d be a great fit with our team.”

While FlexyCore’s primary offering was an app to improve Android performance, it’s unlikely that Google will re-release the technology in the form of another standalone app. Rather, Google will probably aim to fold the capabilities of DroidBooster directly into Android OS, particularly into older iterations of the operating system.

The main selling proposition of DroidBooster was that it allowed older Android phones to runner newer apps more smoothly. For Google, DroidBooster is much more about fragmentation of the Android ecosystem. Although many older phones are simply incompatible with newer versions of Android, some don’t get updates due to performance issues, which is where DroidBooster comes in.

Though we’ll likely have to wait a while before it’s clear how Google plans to leverage FlexyCore’s technology, the deal could usher in anything from faster Android handsets in general, to an official Jelly Bean 4.3 update for devices like the Samsung Galaxy S2.