Mozilla acquires read-it-later service Pocket

Mozilla isn’t known for its acquisition of companies at all. But the company has just announced major news, having purchased Pocket for an undisclosed sum.

Pocket is one of the most popular services on the internet, allowing users to save articles and content for offline viewing. Available as browser add-ons and dedicated apps, Pocket has also delved into the content recommendation game recently.

“As our first strategic acquisition, Pocket contributes to our strategy by growing our mobile presence and providing people everywhere with powerful tools to discover and access high quality web content, on their terms, independent of platform or content silo,” Mozilla announced on its blog.

What will become of the service though?

“As a result of this strategic acquisition, Pocket will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation and will become part of the Mozilla open source project,” the people behind the Firefox browser explained.

Mozilla has acquired Pocket, following months of the two companies working together

But Pocket CEO Nate Weiner says it will be business as usual for the team.

“We’ll be staying in our office, and our name will still be on the wall. Our team isn’t changing and our existing roadmap has been reinforced and is clearer than ever. In fact, we have a few major updates up our sleeves that we are really excited to get into your hands in the coming months.”

Weiner also shed light on the reasons for the deal.

“They have extraordinary resources, global scale, and reach to put Pocket in more places, and help us build an even better product, faster.”

It’s not the first time that the two companies have worked together either, as Pocket was integrated into Firefox in recent months.