Ex-Googlers Launch MightyText, An iMessage For Android Users

Screen shot 2012-06-19 at 11.11.12 AMDuring their lengthy careers at Google in both senior technical and product management roles, Maneesh Arora and Amit Sangani were able to geek out on products like AdSense, AdWords, and the now-defunct Google Health. Arora tells us that, while his time at Google was defined by smart people and ambitious ideas like these, in development there was often a tendency to “over engineer” without thinking about “the average user.” He said that, while Google employees always had Gchat open and used Google Voice (or Wave while it was still alive), none of these products were able to effectively address the true value prop of communication tools for a mainstream audience: Syncing. Especially when it comes to texting.

Arora says simply, “To me, it makes no sense that I have to have my phone in front of me to communicate … If I leave it in another room, or in the car, or at home, I essentially have to retrieve it to see who’s calling or to receive incoming texts.” So, Arora and Sangani set out on a mission to give Android users the ability to view and reply to text messages no matter what device they happened to be using. After several months of beta testing, the pair are today officially launching MightyText — an app that aims to give Android users their own version of Apple’s iMessage.

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