Yahoo Continues Spending Spree, Buying Rondee And GhostBird

In its latest series of acquisitions, Yahoo has bought photography app developer GhostBird Software and conference calling start-up Rondee.

Yahoo will close down both companies, but keep the staff to work on its future products. The financial details of the deals were not disclosed.

Earlier this year, under the leadership of new CEO Marissa Meyer, Yahoo acquired Tumblr for $1.1 billion – one of the biggest deals in its long and colourful history. Meyer’s previous conquests include social news start-up Snip.It, task organiser Astrid and mobile game developer Loki Studios, all bought up by Yahoo under her leadership.

In March, Yahoo paid around $30 million for a news aggregation app Summly, developed by a British teenager.

However, the company’s acquisition of popular French video platform Dailymotion was blocked by local authorities. This reportedly pushed Yahoo to offer up to $800 million for its US rival Hulu.

Marissa Meyer’s bottomless shopping cart

GhostBird is a Toronto-based developer, famous for its iOS photography apps KitCam and PhotoForge2. Both will soon disappear from the AppStore, with staff expected to join work on mobile apps for the Flickr photo sharing platform.

“As photography enthusiasts, we are long-time admirers of Flickr, and we’re thrilled to be able to bring our technology and passion for beautiful photos to the Flickr team. There has been so much exciting progress at Yahoo! as they re-imagine their most-loved products for mobile, including the awesome new Flickr apps for iOS and Android,” says a statement on the GhostBird website.

Rondee, headquartered in San Diego, has been around for six years, and has already stopped accepting new users. Earlier today, the administration sent a mass email to its customers, warning that the service will shut down on 12 July and that they would be migrated to a similar and “highly reputable“ platform called InstantCnference. Rondee users can sign in and access data from past calls until August 12th.

“When we set out to build Rondee, we sought to help as many small businesses as possible become more productive. We’re excited to join Yahoo!’s Small Business team and continue with Yahoo!’s goal of helping small businesses succeed online,” wrote the Rondee team on the website.

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