Polar, a company the creates and hosts online polls, has been acquired by Google+ according to Re/Code.

From the Polar website:

Polar started with the simple idea that everyone has an opinion worth hearing. Since then one in every 449 Internet users told us what their opinion was by voting on a Polar poll. Our deepest thanks go out to each and every one of you.

To help our existing customers with this transition, we’re keeping our publisher tools available until the end of 2014. We’ve also built a simple way to download and save an archive of your Polar polls and data —they’re yours after all!

The Polar Polls are much different than the standard radio button style online polls people are used to seeing.  Here is an example of a recent poll that ran on Mashable.

It is a curious acquisition for Google, as it would have been fairly easy for them to create a similar product inhouse, so it is likely the acquisition was for the Polar team, which is led by Luke Wroblewski who is well known in mobile design circles.  Polar team members will continue to work on Google+ mobile design, while their polling app will shut down at the end of this year.

It also means that Google is continuing to invest in their Google+ product, despite many people believing it could be shuttered.