Yahoo Buys Summly

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Yahoo has confirmed that it will purchase Summly, an app that packages news stories for mobile devices. Perhaps the most interesting part of the purchase is the age of Summly’s founder–new millionaire Nick D’Aloisio is just seventeen.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Douglas MacMillan and Amy Thomson reported, “The largest U.S. Web portal announced on its blog yesterday a deal to acquire Summly, an app which makes it easier to read news on smaller screens, without disclosing financial details. Yahoo agreed to pay $30 million, according to a person familiar with the transaction.”

According to Alexei Oreskovic and Paul Sandle with Reuters, “Summly, founded by 17-year-old Nick D’Aloisio two years ago from his home in London, sorts news by topics in quick bites for smartphones. The start-up works closely with News Corp and is backed by Chinese investor Li Ka-Shing and angel investors including actor Ashton Kutcher and artist Yoko Ono.”

Brian Stelter with The New York Times noted, “One of Yahoo’s newest employees is a 17-year-old high school student in Britain. As of Monday, he is one of its richest, too. That student, Nick D’Aloisio, a programming whiz who wasn’t even born when Yahoo was founded in 1994, sold his news-reading app, Summly, to the company on Monday for a sum said to be in the tens of millions of dollars. Yahoo said it would incorporate his algorithmic invention, which takes long-form stories and shortens them for readers using smartphones, in its own mobile apps, with Mr. D’Aloisio’s help. ‘I’ve still got a year and a half left at my high school,’ he said in a telephone interview on Monday. But he will make arrangements to test out of his classes and work from the Yahoo office in London, partly to abide by the company’s new and much-debated policy that prohibits working from home.”

The Telegraph’s Jessica Winch added, “Nick, who lives with his family in Wimbledon, said he had ‘boring’ plans for the money. ‘I’m planning to invest it – my parents are in control of it,’ he said. ‘I want to buy a shoulder bag.'”