Yahoo! Acquires Rockmelt
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Yahoo continues its year long shopping spree. The tech giant has just acquired social browsing startup Rockmelt.
According to a spokesperson from Yahoo, Rockmelt’s apps and website will shut down as of August 31 as Yahoo prepares to integrate Rockmelt’s technology.
AllThingsD reported that Yahoo paid $60-$70 million for the company. Rockmelt had raised more than $40 million from investors like Accel Partners and Khosla Ventures.
Rockmelt was founded in 2009 by Eric Vishria and Tim Howes, former executives from Opsware and Loudcloud. The company started as a social web browser that integrated facebook and IM-style chat, also including feeds of news from Twitter and other news outlets.
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The company realised its vision of reinventing the web browser proved much too difficult as it sought to take on browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox.
Rockmelt shifted its focus to a content-consuming website and mobile apps that bore similarities to Flipboard.
Yahoo said in a statement, “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.”
