Google acquired mobile design and prototyping firm Pixate this week

Google quietly acquired Pixate for an undisclosed sum this week. The company, which offers a platform that helps developers and design and prototype mobile apps, may help Google bolster the UX of its own apps while helping it expand the range of services already offered to developers.

A post on the Pixate blog written by chief executive Paul Colton confirmed the acquisition.

“Our small team at Pixate has some really big ideas, and with the help of Google we’ll be able to bring those ideas to the design community at scale. We’ve become an essential part of the workflow for tens of thousands of designers, and are excited about expanding our mission at Google to reach millions of product teams worldwide,” Colton explained.

“Starting today we’re making Pixate Studio free and dramatically reducing the cost of the Pixate cloud service,” he added.

Google said “Pixate adds to our ongoing effort to develop new design and prototyping tools.”

Pixate said it counts companies like Apple, Disney and Amazon as past customers. The company’s services will no doubt complement the cloud-based testing service for Android apps unveiled earlier this year at the I/O conference. The service, based on Appurify’s technology – an acquisition it announced at the conference last year, allows developers to run their applications on simulated versions of thousands of different Android devices.