Tim
It was announced today that Nova Launcher has been acquired by Instabridge, a Swedish company that “builds products that help people get online.” The announcement starts off rather positive. It confirms that Nova is not shutting down and that Instabridge wants to, “keep Nova stable, compatible with modern Android, and actively maintained.”
While all of this is great news, we can’t expect these new owners to start handing out Nova for free and make it open source. They have a business to run. With regard to the introduction of ads, the new owners said the following.
Nova needs a sustainable business model to support ongoing development and maintenance. We are exploring different options, including paid tiers and other approaches. As many of you have already anticipated, we are also evaluating ad based options for the free version.
If ads are introduced, Nova Prime will remain ad free. Our guiding principles are clear: keep the experience clean and fast, avoid disruptive formats, and provide a straightforward way to keep the experience ad free.
However, Instabridge was quite clear that anyone who purchased a Prime membership would have that honored. “We intend to honor existing Prime purchases, and Prime features will continue working for existing Prime users. Nova Prime will also remain ad free,” they wrote.
The post has a whole FAQ available which has plenty of good info if you find yourself having questions about the announcement. If you’re a Nova fan, I recommend you check it out.
What do you think, Nova users? Is this welcomed news?
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