YAHOO! IS TO acquire news-gathering app and startup Summly, it announced today.
The Internet giant said it is “excited” to purchase a mobile product company “founded with a vision to simplify the way we get information, making it faster, easier and more concise”.
Summly’s founder, 17-year-old London native Nick D’Aloisio, said he was delighted to sign the agreement, stating Yahoo! was a “perfect fit” for his firm.
“When I founded Summly at 15, I would have never imagined being in this position so suddenly,” he said in a statement. He thanked investors Li Ka-Shing and Horizons Ventures “for having the foresight to back a teenager pursuing his dream”.
Summly received the award for Intuitive Touch at Apple’s Best Apps of 2012.
D’Aloisio and the Summly team will join Yahoo! in the coming weeks. The app itself will close but the technology will be used through Yahoo!’s mobile experiences.
As Yahoo! continues to focus on its mobile products, it has been acquiring various startups that fit with its vision.
“At the age of 15, Nick D’Aloisio created the Summly app at his home in London. It started with an insight – that we live in a world of constant information and need new ways to simplify how we find the stories that are important to us, at a glance,” the company said in today’s announcement.
“Mobile devices are shifting our daily routines, and users have changed not only what, but how much information they consume. Yet most articles and web pages were formatted for browsing with mouse clicks. The ability to skim them on a phone or a tablet can be a real challenge – we want easier ways to identify what’s important to us.”
No details of price have been released at this stage but AllthingsD report the sum is close to $30 million (made up of some stock, but mostly cash). Nice sum!
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