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Mozilla Acquires Pocket and Its More Than 10 Million Users (recode.net)

Posted by BeauHD on from the read-it-later dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox web browser, is buying Pocket, the read-it-later service, for an undisclosed amount. Pocket, which is described by Mozilla as its first strategic acquisition, will continue to operate as a Mozilla subsidiary. Founder Nate Weiner will continue to run Pocket, along with his team of about 25 people. Pocket, previously known as Read It Later, lets users bookmark articles, videos and other content to read or view later on the web or a mobile device. It's great for things like saving offline copies of web articles to read on plane rides or subway commutes, especially where internet access is sparse. Pocket, which was founded in 2007, has more than 10 million monthly active users, according to a rep. That's not bad, but suggests it's still a fairly niche service, especially as big firms like Facebook and Apple build simple "reading list" features into their platforms.

6 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. MozColonSlashSlashA is at it again! by ToTheStars · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What does this have to do with making a simple, secure, extensible browser? I can understand wanting to diversify revenue sources away from corporate handouts, but how much money can a minor social network be making if even the giants (e.g. Twitter) are struggling to make ends meet?

    1. Re:MozColonSlashSlashA is at it again! by xfizik · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Read The Mozilla manifesto
      Nowhere does it say anything about

      making a simple, secure, extensible browser

      In fact, it doesn't even say anything about a browser. Their mission is to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web. Whether they are making any progress with that is up for debate, but it's silly to complain about the browser every time you see the word "Mozilla". Mozilla the organization is bigger than Firefox.

  2. It's Love! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If feels like someone at Mozilla is deeply in love with the Pocket founder. First, they integrated Pocket into Firefox in what seemed little more than an attempt to leverage the browser to bring more business to Pocket. I don't know how well that went, but now they're delivering him a very sweet Valentine's Day gift of a (presumably) large pot of money to keep on doing what he was doing before.

    Love doesn't have to be rational, and Pocket doesn't have to advance the goals of Firefox.

  3. Pocket? The thing i instantly disabled in FF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Never heard of it.

  4. Donations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Did they pay for this with the money they received from donations?

  5. Too much money by manu0601 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does Mozilla has too much money in its hands? There is a lot of room for improvement of Firefox itself, that should be the priority.