Mozilla "Pockets" its very first acquisition

By
Web Desk
|
Mozilla

Mozilla has acquired the read-it-later service, Pocket as its first acquisition.

The nine-year-old company, which makes tools for saving articles and videos to view them later, will continue to operate under found Nate Weiner’s leadership as a Mozilla subsidiary.

Previously known as Read It Later, Pocket lets users bookmark articles, videos and other content to read or view later on the web or a mobile device.

The application is helpful in saving offline copies of web articles that can be accessed by users at times when they are disconnected from the internet.

Founded in 2007, Pocket managed to bring on board over 10 million monthly active users. With social media giants such as Facebook and Apple building “reading list” features into their platforms, survival of niche read-it-later services was fast becoming difficult.

Pocket raised at least $14.5 million earlier in August 2016. $7 million of the total amount was funded by Ashton Kutcher’s fund, New Enterprise Associates, and Axel Springer reported Recode.  

Pocket is the second dominant player in the read-it-later niche that has been acquired by a tech giant. In August last year, Pocket’s competitor Instapaper was acquired by Pinterest for an undisclosed amount.