Yahoo buys e-mail search company

Yahoo has quietly purchased e-mail software company Stata Labs, in what could be an investment in a coming PC search tool to rival Google and Microsoft.

Stata Labs, a privately held company based in San Mateo, Calif., sells an e-mail application called Bloomba that lets people search message text and attachments. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo apparently bought the underlying technology of Stata Labs and does not intend to continue sales of Bloomba.

"This acquisition will provide Yahoo with exceptional technological expertise and strategic assets," according to a posting on Stata Lab's Web site notifying users of the buyout.

Financial terms have not been disclosed. Yahoo and Stata Labs did not immediately return calls requesting comment.

The acquisition comes only a week after Yahoo rival Google unveiled new technology that allows people to search data in e-mail, Word documents and Web pages. Microsoft also has designs to integrate desktop, e-mail and Web search from the operating system, and toward that end it recently bought a small e-mail search company called Lookout Software.

Yahoo executives have said previously that the company plans to introduce a desktop search tool.

For now, Stata's engineers will join Yahoo, and Bloomba and Stata's professional e-mail software will no longer be sold, according to the notice. However, Yahoo will provide support for up to a year for current customers.

[Evisscerator]

re: Yahoo buys e-mail search company

Has no one taken a good look at this technology and how it can be manipulated and turned around for "Big Brother" to use it to abuse us ?

There is no reason why it should be incorporated into the next operating system version from anyone. It should be banned and it potentially could be used to negate privacy rights from individuals to security concerns for businesses.

[ArnoudB]

Lookup?

Micrrosoft bought "Lookout", not "Lookup"... and it works worse than Google and Copernic.

[pbarnes7]

Screwed again!

I was a BIG fan of Bloomba and now it's been swallowed up by a bigger fish. Now I'm stuck with a decent program that still has bugs that will never be fixed, and it'll never be enhanced.

Crap like this is what makes people stick with the monopolists, um, biggest companies. Even when their software isn't at all innovative or supported well, but at least you know they probably won't be swallowed by a bigger fish, making your investment worth less.

BTW, I really mean "worth less", not worthless, because even antiquated software has value.

Micro$oft screwed early adopters of non-MS emailers and dialers by giving away Outlook Express. Then they screwed owners of non-MS PIMs by releasing Outlook. Then they screwed owners of other website editors with FrontPage (whose key features they COPIED from NaviPress). Now I'm screwed by Yahoo when they buy out Statalabs and shelve Bloomba.

Am I just naive or does a customer have a right to expect a FUTURE when they buy software???