Another acquisition by Yahoo was announced late last week, building on a long string of pick-ups under the leadership of CEO Marissa Mayer. The newest company coming into the Yahoo fold is Cooliris, a developer known for its mobile photo-aggregator application Cooliris for Mobile and the recently launched BeamIt Messenger.
“Yahoo has a clear vision and unwavering commitment to making mobile an intuitive and effortless experience,” said Cooliris. “This makes Yahoo the perfect partner for Cooliris, and we are excited to come together to bring indispensable products to a worldwide audience.”
Cooliris announced the move on its website, stating that the team would “remain focused” at their new Yahoo home. No details on the terms of the deal were stated, but it does appear that 17 employees will be making the shift to Yahoo’s Sunnyvale office. Yahoo confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch.
“We have acquired Cooliris. In order to build inspiring products, grow engagement, and ultimately revenue, everything starts with having the best people to help us accelerate our transformation in our growth areas,” read the statement. “As such, we are focusing on acquisitions that align with our key growth areas: search, communications, digital magazines and video. We are excited to welcome 17 employees from Cooliris to Sunnyvale, where our core communications team is located. Nothing will change with the Cooliris products in the immediate future.”
The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2006, delivered a number of applications and plug-ins for viewing photos and other media. Cooliris’s first product was CoolPreviews, a browser plug-in that allowed users to preview pages from a weblink on mouse over. The company found success with 3D Wall and PicLens (later called Cooliris for Desktop), which created a 3D media viewing space for users.
Cooliris made a slight change change to its core offering two years ago, launching Cooliris for Mobile on iOS. The mobile version became a photo aggregator with a similar interface to previous apps, pulling photos from sites like Flickr and Facebook. An Android version launched earlier this year. Cooliris also released BeamIt Messenger in June, looking to improve the messaging experience by combining text and photos “in a meaningful way.”
The company says that Cooliris for Mobile and BeamIt Messenger “will continue to work as usual for the time being.” However, Yahoo tends to shut down the apps and services of the companies it acquires, so a shutdown is likely coming in the next year.
