Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, has bought her
21st company during her stint at the web giant, and this time, it is
social browser maker Rockmelt.
The financial details about the deal have not been disclosed yet, but
according to the sources Yahoo has bought the company for approximately
$60-70 million.
Rockmelt had launched a Facebook-focused
web browser in late 2010 but later shifted its focus to mobile
applications and released an Android application for content
consumption. Rockmelt had raised around $40 million in funding prior to
its acquisition but was unable to gain any significant consumer base.
The company's web traffic was around 650,000 unique visitors per month,
and its iTunes weekly downloads have also reduced considerably.
Yahoo
added that the four year old company will shut down its apps by the end
of the month, but the company's technology will be used within Yahoo to
bring in more traffic and revenue from mobile devices. According to a
source, Rockmelt's CEO Eric Vishria will be joining Yahoo as Vice
President of products for Yahoo's media properties and CTO Tim Howes
will be joining as Vice President of engineering for Yahoo's mobile
products.
According to a Yahoo spokesperson,
"Thirty-two Rockmelt employees have joined our media and mobile
organization. We aren't going to discuss specifics, but we plan to
integrate the Rockmelt technology into our media platform in order to
deliver content in new and exciting ways. Stay tuned!"
Rockmelt co-founders Tim Howes and Eric
Vishria wrote on the company blog about the acquisition :"Yahoo and
Rockmelt share a common goal: To help people discover the best content
from around the Web."
Yahoo has recently bought blogging service Tumblr for $1.1 billion making it the company's biggest acquisition. It has also bought some small startups like Qwiki, Xobni and Lexity recently.
Source: CNET
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