 "Yahoo! acquires Rockmelt, will shut down the social browser's services")
If you thought Yahoo! had exhausted its shopping list for this quarter, think again. The Sunnyvale based Internet giant has scooped up yet another company, this time it is the “social” browser Rockmelt.
The companies announced on Friday that Yahoo! had acquired the four-year-old Rockmelt. According to reports, Yahoo! has paid somewhere between $60 million to $70 million to acquire the startup. Sources have told All Things D that the deal was made largely in cash with stock incentives for employees of Rockmelt.
Yahoo! shops again
“The parallels between Yahoo! and Rockmelt are obvious: we share a common goal to help people discover the best personalized content from around the web. We can’t wait to integrate the Rockmelt technology into our platform as we work to deliver the best experiences to our users in new and exciting ways,” Mike Kerns and Adam Cahan of Yahoo! wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition. The Rockmelt team too wrote a heartfelt letter of thanks to its users and promised to use all the feedback it had accrued from users over the years at Yahoo! Rockmelt has announced that it will be shutting down its apps and web products on August 31, 2013. Users will be able to export all their data with the click of a button while using the apps. Of course, the service will not be accepting any new registrations starting today.
Rockmelt was launched four years ago and touted to be the first social browser. It integrated your Facebook account to your browser, allowing you to access your notifications and chats from anywhere within the browser. With it losing steam over the years, Rockmelt shifted its focus to mobile apps, probably the reason why Yahoo! was eyeing the startup in the first place, since it’s trying to bolster its mobile products.
Rockmelt will join the likes of Tumblr, Xobni, Qwiki and Bignoggins as Yahoo’s purchases for this year under its dynamic CEO Marissa Mayer. The company surprised all by scooping up Tumblr in May this year for a whopping $1.1 billion and has promised to keep out of the day-to-day functioning of the blogging platform.
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