Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) maintains its startup acquisition spree, after purchasing eight such companies in the past quarter. The latest to join the ranks is Incredible Labs, the developer of personal-assistant app Donna.
Incredible Labs was named after Donna Moss from the popular TV show The West Wing and was designed to help its users manage their daily schedules. It provides notifications of upcoming appointments, travel time, current location and also connects to conference calls.
Following the acquisition, the app is no longer available on Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) App Store. Donna has features that are similar to Google Inc.’s (GOOG) Google Now service. Reportedly, Yahoo! will now work on its own equivalent of Google Now.
Yahoo! currently has its focus on producing engaging mobile apps. Its latest acquisition will help it in gaining mobile traction. Also, the tech giant will hire five team members of Incredible Labs including CEO Kevin Cheng, a former Yahoo employee himself. This acquisition improves Yahoo’s chances of making more effective apps and also brings back some key executives.
Out of the nearly two dozen acquisitions that Yahoo! has made since Marissa Mayer became CEO, majority of them have been in the area of mobile. Recently, the Internet portal acquired a mobile-marketing company called Sparq, virtual gaming company Cloud Party and Tomfoolery, an enterprise app developer.
Some other famous acquisitions which made news last month include Equifax Inc.’s (EFX) acquisition of TDX Group, a debt-Management firm and Google’s acquisition of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company.
Currently, Yahoo! has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
Get all Zacks Research Reports and be alerted to fast-breaking buy and sell opportunities every trading day.
Be the first to comment