Google leaves Android App Inventor to the open source community

Last month's surprising closure of Google Labs may have its first significant casualty: Google has announced it is ending support for App Inventor for Android, but the company is ultimately leaving the fate of the project to the open source community.

Released in July of last year, App Inventor for Android was designed to enable nontechnical users to easily create Android smartphone apps, albeit ones that are relatively limited in functionality. The project hasn't enjoyed much in the way of broad success that could equate to future profits, which is why Google is cutting support for it along with the other slacker projects in the shuttered Labs.

However, Google recognizes that App Inventor has garnered success in the educational space, so the company plans to make the code open source and to "[explore] opportunities to support the educational use of App Inventor on an open source platform," according to the official Google App Inventor blog. Read more...