Yahoo! has bought Stata Labs, the guys behind Bloomba an excellent email program that is more of a database.
In a statement the company said they “intend to continue supporting Stata Labs’ existing customers for one year from the date of product purchase”. They said that while there is no word on what Yahoo! will do with Bloomba, there will be no more sales of the program, and folks who bought Bloomba within the last thirty days are eligible for a full refund.
As Reuters points out in a story on the purchase, Microsoft recently bought Lookout, a plugin that allows users to better search Outlook. Given that Bloomba has been described (pre-Gmail) as the Google of email, you might get an idea where this is all going. The big game in town seems to be to offer some sort of product that allows folk to get a better grip on searching their emails, contacts, what-have-you. Bloomba did a pretty good job of that.
And don’t forget that Yahoo! bought OddPost a few months back. Oddpost wraps email, RSS and other stuff into a kind of web-based email program. Neat stuff, although since Yahoo! bought it I’ve not heard anything more of it. Would be sad to see all this great stuff somehow get lost. And since I’ve recommended both products to readers in the past, should I and others be more wary about raving about stuff that gets sold off and subsequently disappears?
“And since I’ve recommended both products to readers in the past, should I and others be more wary about raving about stuff that gets sold off and subsequently disappears?”
Relax – you are not responsible for predicting the future. Small companies that make a great product (or two) will sometimes flourish, sometimes die, and sometimes get bought and… disappear.
It works that way.