Mozilla makes mobile move with Pocket acquisition
Mozilla, producer of the open source Firefox web browser, has announced its acquisition of Pocket; a scrapbook-style platform allowing internet users to save articles and videos for later browsing - for an undisclosed sum.
The takeover brings Pocket full circle having begun life nine years ago as a Firefox extension. It now becomes a fully-fledged member of the Mozilla family, operating as an independent subsidiary.
As Mozilla’s first acquisition, Pocket will give the service a toehold on the fast-growing mobile market where Firefox has been historically weak – as evidenced by its ill-fated attempts to develop a Firefox phone and a belated launch of Firefox on iOS which didn’t arrive globally until 2016.
Against this backdrop Pocket will deliver 10 nmillion active monthly users as well as a suite of potential new revenue streams ranging from advertising and premium subscriptions to analytics for publishers.
Denelle Dixon, Mozilla’s chief business and legal officer, remarked: “We love the way that they have the user-first mentality, very similar to the way we drive our products. It hasn’t just been about how much revenue they can glean from their product.”
Mozilla intends to harness Pocket as a key plank of its planned recommendation engine for the web by fully integrating it within its browser, having already undergone a recent re-brand which leveraged the '://' coding symbol in a new logo.