In an odd bit of M&A news, the developers at Bitspin announced that the small company will be joining forces with Google. Whether Google has purchased the company outright or merely hired its Zurich-based development team isn't clear, but in either case, the big G will be benefitting from their impressive user interface experience soon. Google has not commented on the situation, and there is no dollar amount posted on the Bitspin website.

If you're unfamiliar with Bitspin, it's the development team behind the stunning Timely alarm clock app, perhaps one of the best examples of synchronous form and function on the Play Store. This free alarm clock has received somewhere between 1 million and 5 million downloads and currently sits at 4.4 stars out of 5. The company also developed the Tasks collaboration and to-do app, though it's published under a different developer name on the Play Store.

The Bitspin team, former ETH Zurich students, on the Google campus. Photo credit: Google+.

According to the post on Bitspin's website, Timely will continue to be available on the Play Store, though it's unlikely to receive major feature updates after this point. Content that was formerly locked behind a small in-app purchase, including extra themes, sounds, and challenges, is now free.

While we can't say why Google went after Bitspin, it's a safe bet that their excellent visual design played a big role in the decision. Google has redesigned its own alarm clock app in Android 4.2 and again in 4.4. One might assume that the Bitspin team will devote at least some time to it in the next version of Android, and work with other UI elements in Android and beyond. Congratulations to the Bitspin team - don't spend all that money in one place.

Source: Bitspin.ch - Thanks, Ugo and Vinoth Ragunathan