Pocket, the decade-old read-it-later platform, now belongs to Mozilla. An acquisition was announced by both sides earlier today.
Mozilla, as you may or may not know, is the parent company of the Mozilla Foundation. Still not ringing any bells? Ok, let's clarify once more. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Foundation. So you understand that Mozilla owns Firefox. Pocket, too, is now an asset belonging to Mozilla.
Firefox is dwindling in popularity as Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari dominate the web browser space. Buying Pocket is, according to Mozilla, its “first strategic acquisition” and more are coming.
Here's what Mozilla says Pocket's purpose will be:
“Pocket will join Mozilla's product portfolio as a new product line alongside the Firefox web browsers with a focus on promoting the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content.”
Way back, Pocket was actually known as Read It Later. That's the current name of the company Mozilla is technically acquiring to gain ownership of Pocket. Read It Later was renamed to Pocket in 2012. Since then, the platform and its various apps have earned 10 million monthly active users.
Pocket founder Nate Weiner will continue to run his current team under Mozilla's ownership.
Financial terms of the agreement between Mozilla and Pocket was not disclosed. Unless an insider shares something, it's unlikely we'll ever know what Mozilla paid for Pocket since both are private companies.
Source: Mozilla, Pocket
