Wheelings & Dealings: Google Takes a Big Step in 3D Graphics with the Acquisition of drawElements
July 24, 2014
By Lavanya Rathnam, TMCnet Contributing Writer
Google (News - Alert) has recently acquired a Finnish firm called drawElements, a company specializing in providing 3D graphics for mobile phones. The exact terms of the agreement is not known, though it is believed that Google paid an eight-figure mark to acquire the company.
The Helsinki-based drawElements has many innovative products for mobile 3D. Its flagship product is dEQP, a toolkit for assessing the quality, accuracy, precision and stability of OpenGL GPUs and OpenGL ES. This toolkit has a two-pronged use – it is a quality control tool, and at the same time, it doubles up as a tool that provides guidelines for developers about the specifications and capabilities of different mobile operating systems. Furthermore, drawElements creates a graphics test that helps companies to assess their compatibility with Google's Android (News - Alert) operating system.
This acquisition gives Google an opportunity to create standards that will have to be adhered to by smartphone manufacturers. Currently, the Android space has many hardware components and screen sizes that make it difficult for Google to provide standardized graphics. To overcome this difficulty, drawElements' products are the right choice as they can now create a set of parameters against which different devices can be checked to ensure that there is some standardization with respect to 3D graphics rendering. In this sense, this acquisition is a big move for Google as it looks to gain ground in the mobile market. So far, Google has struggled to monetize the mobile web because of the growing share of Facebook (News - Alert)'s advertising strategy. With this acquisition, Google is likely to have a bigger share in mobile advertising.
As a part of the acquisition, the management of drawElements will move to San Francisco while the operational team will continue to based in Finland.
Edited by Adam Brandt