Continuing with its non-stop shopping bender, Yahoo acquired three more startups over the last few days: Bignoggins Productions, Qwiki and Xobni. That brings the total up to 15 in this year alone – that we know of – and 17 since Marissa Mayer became chief executive a year ago, as the iconic internet company uses
acquisitions as a means to bolster talent and expand its mobile offerings.
The first of those three is a one-man development shop that specialises in mobile apps for managing fantasy sports teams, such as Fantasy Monster ($5) and Draft Monster ($3). Financial terms of the deal were kept under wraps but it isn't believed to have made much of a dent on Yahoo's wallet.
That same day the company closed another deal for video-sharing app Qwiki, for an estimated $40 to $50 million. The service resembles Vine and other video sharing apps, with the difference that you use pictures and videos from your phone's library rather than shooting a spontaneous clip within the app. Yahoo said that it will continue to support Qwiki and keep it as an independent app like Tumblr.
Rounding up the latest string of acquisitions is Xobni, an email and address book management service available for Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, iCloud, BlackBerry, Android, iPhone and cloud services like SalesForce. Although financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed, some have pegged the price as low as $30 million or as high as $70 million including incentive-based compensation for Xobni shareholders.
As a result of the acquisition Xobni is no longer accepting new purchases of premium products and anyone who is already a customer will see their subscription extended through July 2nd, 2014 – after which many of Xobni's services will be shut down. The company posted a FAQ page detailing the changes.
Going forward Yahoo says it will integrate Xobni's technology into its own communications products, including the mobile and PC versions of its email and instant messaging services.
Among Yahoo's other recent purchases are a number of mobile app companies that cost it around $16 million in total, according to AllThingsD. That's aside from Summly at $30 million and Tumblr for $1.1 billion.