British teen confirms sale of mobile news service to Yahoo
Yahoo is to bolster its mobile offering with the acquisition of Summly, a start-up mobile news service headed by a British teenager for an undisclosed fee.
Summly co-founder Nick D’Aloisio (17, pictured) confirmed he has agreed to sell the news aggregation service earlier today (March 25) where he also claimed mobile would be at the centre of Yahoo’s recovery plan under the stewardship of CEO Marissa Mayer.
The Summly app – a service that streamlines publishers’ content to make it display better on mobile devices – will close and is no longer available via the App Store or Google’s Play with staff at the start-up set to join Yahoo’s ranks in the coming weeks.
“With over 90 million summaries read in just a few short months, this is just the beginning for our technology,” said D’Aloiso adding that its “summarisation technology “will soon return to multiple Yahoo! products.”
Early backers of the service have included a host of tier-one names including Tech City chief Joanna Shields, Stephen Fry and Ashton Kutcher, either in terms of financial support or business advice, since its inception in late 2011.
Meanwhile, Sky is to switch from using Google technology to support its email service in favour of Yahoo’s from next week (4 April) with the broadcaster moving to assure users their existing content, including contact details, will remain secure.
“Google is no longer able to provide Sky with an email platform that caters for our requirements. As another leading provider of email services, we’ve chosen Yahoo! to power the new Sky Yahoo Mail,” reads a notice from the broadcast provider.
