Mozilla buys ‘read-it-later’ service Pocket

Mozilla, the team behind the Firefox web browser, has made its first acquisition. The company has bought Pocket, a read-it-later service, for an undisclosed amount. Pocket will operate as an independent subsidiary of Mozilla and is said to help bring the company to more mobile devices. It’s not exactly clear how that will help but Pocket does bring with it 10 million monthly active users and new potential businesses for Mozilla, such as advertising, analytics for publishers, and premium subscription service. The acquisition is like a homecoming for Pocket as it started out as a Firefox add-on.

Pocket previously rejected an offer from Evernote after it became apparent to them that their service would just be a feature inside the bigger company’s app. But it seems with Mozilla, they can remain a standalone service. According to Mozilla, over time Pocket can help them with its “content graph” initiative, which is the company’s effort to create a recommendation engine for the web and baked into the browser.

Source: Pocket + The Verge