It's not very common for a team to be acquired but not its technology, and that's exactly what happened today between a photo sharing service and a keyboard replacement. Pinterest has announced it is bringing in the team behind Fleksy, which is a very popular keyboard replacement that's used by millions of people on Android and iOS.
Hit the break for more.
Hold back your tears for a moment as the actual technology powering the keyboard for Fleksy is staying put and transitioning to an open-sourced project. For now, Fleksy will continue to live on in the Play Store and Apple's App Store. But after that, it will be up to independent developers to toy with the keyboard and make advancements for the public.
Here's part of the official statement from Fleksy:
Fleksy will remain available in the app stores for the foreseeable future, so no need to worry about being forced to re-learn to type on a alternative keyboard.
As a tribute to our incredible community of users we have made the decision to open-source some of the Fleksy components that the blind and visually impaired community grew to love. We trust you’ll do great things with it.
We’ll update you here and send out a tweet when the open-sourced project is ready for your contributions.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by either party.
Everyone here at Talk Android wishes the best for those at Fleksy, whether they're joining Pinterest or not. It's been an absolute pleasure working with all of them in recent years.
We're just puzzled on what the new Pinterest employees will be doing there. Maybe they'll build a photo-only keyboard that replaces text with recommended images? Bizarre, I know. Counting that idea out, though, seems unfair because of Apple's goal to replace text with emojis.
Source: Fleksy
