Google has apparently approached Cyanogen Inc with the intention of acquiring the company. Cyanogen Inc is the developer behind the popular custom Android ROM CyanogenMod. The company has reportedly turned down the offer, but it remains a mystery as to why Google would make the move in the first place.
The engineers behind CyanogenMod have not achieved any particularly outstanding feats of design. The custom ROM does not add all that much to Android, nor does it even attempt to replace any of the stock Android apps with its own. Essentially, Google would not gain anything much from buying the company; at least not anything that it couldn’t get by simply hiring new software engineers.
It could be speculated that Google is attempting to buy over a competing version of Android and prevent any smartphone OEMs from jumping ship (like Oppo has done). However, this would not make sense as CyanogenMod still uses all of Googles own Android apps, not to mention the Google Play Store. Meaning that while it is not the stock Android experience that the company wants to put out, it is still no different from the changes made by OEMs like HTC or Samsung.
Still, it appears that Cyanogen will remain independent for now. Although walking away from the kind of money that Google is able to throw around cannot have been easy to do.
[Source: Ars Technica]
