Google Acquires Visual Effects Startup Zync

Google on Tuesday announced it has acquired Zync, which produces the visual effects technology behind movies like Star Trek Into Darkness and Looper.

As part of the acquisition, Zync will be joining the Google Cloud Platform team. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded nearly five years ago, Zync has been used as the rendering solution in more than a dozen feature films and commercials, including American Hustle, The Way Way Back, and Zookeeper.

'Creating amazing special effects requires a skilled team of visual artists and designers, backed by a highly powerful infrastructure to render scenes,' Google Product Manager Belwadi Srikanth wrote in a blog post Tuesday. 'Many studios, however, don't have the resources or desire to create an in-house rendering farm, or they need to burst past their existing capacity. Together Zync + Cloud Platform will offer studios the rendering performance and capacity they need, while helping them manage costs.'

On the cost-saving front, Google said it will offer per-minute billing instead of charging by the hour, so studios won't need to pay for unused capacity when their job doesn't fit into perfect hour-long increments.

Meanwhile, the Zync team said it will be able to provide better customer service as part of Google - including more host packages and scalability. 'With a friction-free, affordable, and elastic rendering solution, visual designers and artists in the industry can continue to do their best work,' Zync said.

Google promised more details of the acquisition in the coming months.

Meanwhile, Google this week missed out on another company it was at one point hoping to acquire: Twitch. Amazon yesterday confirmed that it will acquire the video game streaming service for $970 million in cash. For more, check out What Is Twitch?