Yahoo Reportedly Set To Acquire Anchor App Developer Tomfoolery For $16 Million
January 28, 2014
Yahoo is reportedly set to check off another item in its startup shopping list: Tomfoolery.
According to a new report by The Wall Street Journal, the Internet giant is in advanced talks to acquire Tomfoolery for $16 million. Tomfoolery is a developer of business apps, most notably the AppAdvice App of the Week awardee Anchor, a workplace-focused social networking app.
Should it push through, the acquisition will constitute another "boomerang" hire, a term coined by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer that refers to returning Yahoo employees. The Wall Street Journal notes:
With the acquisition, the Internet portal would gain a team that includes Tomfoolery Chief Executive Kakul Srivastava, a seven-year veteran of Yahoo who helped manage photo-sharing site Flickr and left the company in 2011; and Sol Lipman, a former AOL vice president.It's unclear, though, whether Yahoo plans to keep Tomfoolery's Anchor operating or shut it down as soon as the acquisition is finalized. A couple of Yahoo's most recent acquisitions, the DreamWorks-funded video-sharing app Ptch and the cross-platform video streaming startup QuikIO, were discontinued right after they were purchased by Yahoo. Other services that suffered a similar fate include Summly, Astrid, KitCam, and Bignoggins. Qwiki, the “quick” video creation app acquired by Yahoo last July, is a rare exception as it remains available in the App Store.
