14 DAY TRIAL // Google bought Instantiations, a company that builds developer tools, last month and the company has now revealed its master plan. Google is now offering many of the products Instantiations had for free, despite some of them costing hundreds of dollars before.
"In early August, Google acquired Instantiations, a company known for its focus on Eclipse Java developer tools, including GWT Designer," Bruce Johnson, from the Google Developer Team, wrote.
"We're happy to announce today that we're relaunching the following former Instantiations products under the Google name and making them available to all developers at no charge," he announced.
The tools offered now for free are: GWT Designer, CodePro AnalytiX, WindowBuilder Pro and WindowTester Pro.
The move is not entirely surprising, Google usually offers its products for free. But it does have some paid software tools, things like the SketchUp Pro 3D modeling software and Google Earth Pro.
But in this case, the advantages of freeing the products are obvious, Google wants to encourage developers to use its products so any tool it can provide to help them is welcomed.
"Now that these products are available again, we hope you’ll start using them within your GWT projects. Meanwhile, our next step is to more deeply unify them into the GWT family of tools by blending the fantastic Instantiations technology into the Google Plugin for Eclipse (GPE)," he added.
This is the reason why Google acquired the company in the first place. GWT Designer, a plugin for the Eclipse IDE, is one of the most popular tools associated with GWT.
However, the tool was quite expensive, and so were the other tools provided by Instantiations.
Google also hosts a number of open-source products, including big ones like Chrome and Android, but it hasn't opened up the Instantiations tools. The Eclipse IDE is open source.