Facebook acquired Little Eye Labs, a startup based in Bangalore, India that makes tools for monitoring and optimizing performance in Android apps. The Little Eye team announced the new arrangement in an excited blog post. “For us, this is an opportunity to make an impact on the more than 1 billion people who use Facebook,” the team wrote. To help existing customers deal with the transition, they’re working on a free version of their tool for current customers to use until June 2014.
No word yet on the financial details, though a source told TechCrunch the deal was between $10 million to $15 million. The entire Little Eye Labs team will relocate to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Ca, to help Facebook develop improve the performance for the social network’s Android apps.
“The Little Eye Labs technology will help us to continue improving our Android codebase to make more efficient, higher-performing apps,” Subbu Subramanian, Facebook’s engineering manager, told Reuters.
Last year, Facebook debuted a special software for Android called Facebook Home, but it was a largely unsuccessful outing, although the Chat Heads feature was popular enough to expand to iOS. Perhaps Little Eye can help the social network figure out ways to make its Android outings more attractive for users (though I doubt they could’ve found a way to save Home from its destiny of obscurity).
This is Facebook’s first acquisition of an Indian company, and it may inject confidence into the burgeoning mobile startup community.
Photo credit: Little Eye Labs
