Cyanogen won’t be bought by Google

Google seems to be expanding its team even further, with new acquisitions popping up every week. The last major acquisition was Lift Labs, the tech geniuses that developed Liftware for people with tremors and Alzheimer’s. Google has approached another popular company recently, Cyanogen Inc, with a buyout proposal.

Cyanogen created the CyanogenMod ROM that is one of the most popular ROMs for Android devices out there, besides Paranoid Android. People love Cyanogen because they offer ROMs with a ton of features and customizability, allowing users to tinker with every bit of the UI on their phones. Cyanogen provided the CyanogenMod for the OnePlus One flagship killer as well, and the launch of the flagship coincided with a boom in popularity for Cyanogen Inc.

It seems that Google saw a lot of potential in the developers at Cyanogen and Sundar Pichai has approached the company in an attempt to offer to buy them and integrate Cyanogen into Google. Cyanogen also helped build Amazon’s Fire OS and Nokia X and quite a few custom ROMs. We don’t have details on what Sundar Pichai discussed with Cyanogen developers, but we do suspect that the acquisition would have been similar to that of Motorola, although Google might have just wanted to get rid of the competition.

Fact of the matter is that Cyanogen has refused the proposal from Google and remains an independent company. Cyanogen hasn’t said anything about what kind of offer Google came up with, nor why the company decided to refuse. Maybe Google offered too little and Cyanogen thought they were worth more, even though it can be considered a startup company. In any case, the company is looking for more funding opportunities and aims to to gather $1 billion in investments.

What do you think Google and Sundar Pichai wanted from Cyanogen, actually? Do you think they wanted to buy Cyanogen so that they could integrate their ROMs into a future Android OS? If you are familiar with Cyanogen and CyanogenMod, do you think the company would have benefited from a Google buyout or would it have spiraled into anonymity? I think that both variants are equally likely, since neither Google nor Cyanogen have spoken about what the buyout consisted of. I lean towards believing that Google would have kept Cyanogen independent and incorporated the software they make into future Android operating systems, but that’s just a hunch.