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Mozilla makes first-ever acquisition: Web-clipping app 'Pocket'

App scrapes content into devices for later viewing, even offline, advances Moz mission to make web accessible

Mozilla has acquired Read It Later, Inc. the developer of a web clipping app called “Pocket”.

Pocket lets you bookmark content from the web and then syncs it to make it accessible on all manner of devices, even when they are offline. The service can pull off this trick for text,images and video. Read It Later, Inc. claims 22 million users for the service. Mozilla says 10 million of those users are active.

Mozilla says 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.”

Pocket will become part of Mozilla's open source efforts, but will operate as a subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation.

Mozilla was already integrating Pocket into Firefox and says that effort led the two organisations to believe they could take the app further by combining forces.

What's in store hasn't been explained but we do know that Pocket currently has a Firefox extension. At a guess that could become a more integral part of Firefox and the Mozilla brand could find its way into Pocket's apps to give the organisation a beyond-the-browser presence on Android and iOS.

There's also the small matter of money to consider, as Pocket offers a paid premium service and adds sponsored posts to the feed of recommended content it offers users. Mozilla's tried ads too, but binned its efforts citing the need to focus on core user concerns. ®

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