Posted by : Unknown
Thursday, 18 September 2014
Google is bringing Polar over to Google+ in the hopes that the team behind the popular opinion-tracking service will be able to heat up Google's social network. While it remains to be seen just how Google's latest acquisition might best fit into the Google+ experience, Google's David Besbris, vice president of engineering, told the Wall Street Journal that Polar's team will work to make Google+ more user-friendly on mobile devices.
Polar's current line of business, which it will be shutting down at the end of the year, is just what its name suggests: easy-to-use polls that can be filled out via various Web services and apps. We're not talking about surveys filled with hundreds of options. Rather, Polar's offerings are more of the "Do you like Mario or Luigi?" variety.
"Polar started with the simple idea that everyone has an opinion worth hearing. Since then one in every 449 Internet users told us what their opinion was by voting on a Polar poll. Our deepest thanks go out to each and every one of you," reads Polar's description. Polar was founded approximately two years ago by Luke Wroblewski and Jeff Cole—the former previously the co-founder and chief product officer of Bagcheck, and the latter the co-founder of Patients Like Me.
As part of the company cozying up with Google, Polar is releasing a series of articles Wroblewski wrote about mobile and multi-device design as a free iBook and PDF document. It's also a bit of a tease of Wroblewski's expertise in the area; he previously wrote a book about app design called "Mobile First," which has since become a bit of a Silicon Valley buzzword.
"Each version is filled with nuanced user interface design details and big-picture thinking on mobile and multi-device design for PCs, tablets, TVs, and beyond. It's our hope that some of our experiences, insights, and missteps, will ultimately help you with the product journey you're on now or will be in the future," Wroblewski wrote.
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- Google Acquires Polar to Improve Google+ on Mobile