The Yahoo acquisition train just keeps a rollin’. There’s one more day of January left. Let’s see if they can squeeze in one or two more.
News has come out that the company has now acquired Tomfoolery and Incredible Labs. The former is the company behind the Anchor app, which will be shut down. The latter is is the company behind personal assistant app Donna, which will also be shut down.
The Tomfoolery team writes in a message on its site:
Friends – together we have traveled far and wide, you and the small and humble folk at Tomfoolery, Inc., and now it’s time for us to move to the next phase of our journey. Today, we are announcing that we’ve reached an agreement to join Yahoo to help build the next generation of communications and community products. If you’re familiar with our backgrounds, you’ll see that we have long loved Yahoo and the products it has created. We are so incredibly proud and excited to be joining this company (and for some of us, it’s a bit of a homecoming).
We will be taking our passion for beautiful, human communication products and using it to build the next generation of social Yahoo products. As of today, we have disabled new user sign ups for Anchor. At deal close, we will discontinue Anchor (and for those of you who were able to try it out, Action). The deal, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close in the next few days. We will provide more information on specific shutdown procedures in our final newsletter, when the transaction is complete.
Similarly, the Incredible Labs pick-up is a talent acquisition, according to TechCrunch, with five or seven team members joining Yahoo, and the Donna app being shut down. TC shares a statement from Yahoo on the deal:
We have reached an agreement to acquire Incredible Labs, the team behind personal assistant app, Donna. In case you haven’t heard of her, Donna’s pretty amazing – she has an immense amount of intellect, she keeps you on time and gives you the information you need, when you need it. For her clients, she’s the ultimate daily habit. When we met with the team from Incredible Labs, it was an immediate fit. As we look to the future, our visions are aligned in that we think technology should be smart enough to think for us. Five team members will join the Communications team in Sunnyvale at deal close, where they will work on Yahoo Mail. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close in the next few days.
Other companies Yahoo has acquired or is acquiring based on reports from this month include Aviate and Sparq, bringing the total (so far) to four for January.
Last year saw nearly 25 acquisitions by the company. Earlier this week, Yahoo reported its earnings for the year, which weren’t incredibly spectacular, though its traffic has increased.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
