Mozilla has acquired Pocket, a kind of DVR for the internet, for an undisclosed sum. The 9-year-old company, which makes tools for saving articles and videos to view them later, is Mozilla’s first acquisition. It represents a homecoming of sorts for Pocket, which began life as a Firefox extension before eventually expanding its team and building a suite of apps for every major platform. Pocket has been Firefox’s default read-it-later service since 2015.
This follows Instapaper’s acquisition by Pinterest last year. It seems that read-it-later services just aren’t stand-alone businesses. I don’t use Pocket, but I hope this Mozilla deal allows the team behind it to keep working on the product the way they want.