Before Building CloudKit, Apple Considered Buying The Now Facebook-Owned Parse
June 17, 2014
Apple reportedly considered buying the mobile infrastructure company Parse before building its own cloud application platform in the form of CloudKit.
This much is revealed in a new profile of Parse co-founder and CEO Ilya Sukhar published by The Information:
Mr. Sukhar, a mobile programming prodigy, had already rejected offers from Apple and Dropbox, which were more interested in the company’s four talented founders than its business, according to people who were involved in the conversations. Facebook persuaded Mr. Sukhar and his colleagues that it had much bigger plans.Parse was acquired by Facebook a little over a year ago for a reported $85 million. As noted by 9to5Mac, that Apple thought about purchasing Parse is of note in light of its recent announcement of CloudKit. Much like Parse, CloudKit lets developers tap into existing servers to easily implement cloud-based integrations in their mobile apps. Apparently, instead of pursuing its planned acquisition of Parse or considering buying another cloud application platform, Apple just went ahead and built its own. Whether CloudKit actually performs better than or at least on par with Parse remains to be seen. See also: Apple's Jony Ive Talks About New Materials, Tim Cook And More In NYT Interview, WSJ: Samsung In Talks To Buy Nuance Communications, The Company Behind Siri, and New Tagging And Hashtag Tools Welcome Facebook Paper Users.