Google buys startup behind popular gesture control app Flutter

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Gesture recognition startup Flutter isn’t a household name in the world of natural user interfaces, but the technology behind its Mac and Windows applications might soon become much more ubiquitous. Today, the company announced it has been acquired by Google, and will be continuing research under their wing. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but TechCrunch has heard that the price was around $40 million.

Download: Flutter for Mac, Windows and Chrome

On Mac, Flutter billed itself as “Kinect for OS X”, enabling people to control music and movies with hand gestures detected by a computer’s webcam. Supported applications included iTunes, Spotify, Rdio, MPlayerX, VLC, Ecoute, Quicktime and Keynote. Additionally, through a recently released Chrome extension, the company added support for Google’s YouTube, Netflix, Grooveshark, and Pandora.

The app made Apple’s “Best of 2012” selection and reached top-five status in its first two weeks of launch in around 30 countries. It has also received votes of confidence from the likes of Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, Spring Ventures, and Start Fund with $1.4 million in funding.

It’s not clear what Google’s plans for the technology are but it isn’t far fetched to think some of it could eventually be incorporated into any number of Google products, such as its Chromebooks or Google Glass. For now, Flutter is still available for download, and the company says we should stay tuned for future updates.

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