Yahoo Acquires Rockmelt – Will Shut Down Browser

By Gilbert Falso :: 2:22 PM

Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer is extending her empire building streak – Yahoo today announced the acquisition of the company behind the social web browser Rockmelt.

The purchase, valued between $60 and $70 million, will allow Yahoo to leverage Rockmelt technologies to improve its lackluster mobile and media sites. Although it began life as an alternative web browser, Rockmelt, as of late, had been focusing mostly on mobile improvements – this is the area that Yahoo will be concentrating on.

Investors, who supported Rockemelt with about $40 million, are not likely to be pleased with the low price of the deal. A number of big names signed on to help fund the company in its early days, like Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Bill Campbell, First Round Capital, and Khosla Ventures.

As part of the deal, a number of talented Rockmelt employees will now work for Yahoo. This even includes some of the Rockmelt top brass. Founders Tim Howes and Eric Vishria will become high level Yahoo executives, and Howes will assume management of the team overseeing engineering for all of Yahoo’s mobile offerings. Vishria has been named Vice President for media products at Yahoo.

In a blog post announcing the deal, Yahoo noted, “the parallels between Yahoo! and Rockmelt are obvious: we share a common goal to help people discover the best personalized content from around the web.”

Rockmelt will shut down its browser at the end of August.