Flutter (company)

Flutter was a startup founded in 2010 and developed gesture recognition technologies. The company received funding from Y Combinator before it was acquired by Google on October 2, 2013. At the time of the acquisition, Flutter had developed its first application, which used gesture recognition technology over a built-in webcam to allow users to control iTunes, Spotify, VLC, and QuickTime through hand gestures.

At the time of the acquisition of Flutter by Google, Flutter confirmed the company's application would remain live and operational and would be continued to be offered for Mac, while the company continued to work on research at Google. The acquisition came after Flutter's initial application had downloads in more than ninety countries and reached the top-five applications in the Mac App Store in the first two weeks of launch in around thirty of those countries—achieving number one in fourteen of those countries, with around 1 million users on desktop.

At the time of the acquisition, it was unclear if Google would keep Flutter working on standalone applications, or if the technology would be integrated into its own software and hardware. However, Flutter's URL, as of May 2017, began redirecting to Google's open-source UI software development kit Flutter, which is used to develop cross-platform applications for Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, and Google Fuchsia from a single codebase. This software development kit includes the capabilities for handling gestures from users, suggesting Google used the initial application in the development of the Flutter software development kit.