Yahoo Buys Rockmelt for $70M

To Yahoo, the social browser Rockmelt was worth around $65 million to inject some new technology into the search engine's infrastructure.

Yahoo paid somewhere between $60 million to $70 million for the startup Rockmelt, according to AllThingsD. Likely Yahoo hopes that the browser, which never quite seemed to take off, can beef up its own offerings especially in mobile.

Rockmelt amassed about $40 million from investors who apparently were already being optimistic in 2010 backing a browser directly competing with Google Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
 
The acquisition will also give Yahoo some needed talent including founders Tim Howes and Eric Vishria. Rockmelt will shut down operations at the end of August.
 
Rockmelt attempted to integrate the Web browser with social features, which didn't seem to catch on. However, its mobile possibilities which were never fully realized could be quite a boon to Yahoo. In the end, it's not a bad acquisition for Yahoo but we hope it can make something new and innovative for one of Silicon Valley's oldest search engine.
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