Morning Report: Yahoo To Shutter App Built By The Founder Of A Different App It Bought Who Already Quit

Morning Report: Yahoo’s acquisition binge continues to impress.

This morning news broke that Yahoo, now part of the Franken-Oath which exists under the auspices of Vertical Horizon, will “[kill] off the best app it’s ever made,” in the words of my former employer, The Next Web.

Yes, News Digest is going away. In its stead, Yahoo is recommending a different app from its stable, namely the “Newsroom” application. While you might not have known that Yahoo had two news apps, it apparently does. Or, in a short bit, will have had two news apps.

Regardless, the shutdown of a single app isn’t really the sort of thing we try to cover in these Morning Reports. But this app is a bit different.

We’ll tell the story in headlines:

• March 25, 2013: Yahoo Buys A Mobile News Startup [Summly] Founded By A 15-Year-Old For $30 Million
• October 17, 2013: Summly’s Nick D’Aloisio On Yahoo’s Approach To Ephemerality, And Its Startup Mentality
• January 8, 2014: Yahoo’s News Digest App Is “Summary 2.0”
• October 29, 2015: Summly Founder Nick D’Aloisio Leaves Yahoo
• June 14, 2017: Verizon closes Yahoo deal, Mayer steps down
• June 22, 2017: Verizon-owned Yahoo is killing off the best app it’s ever made

And today: “Morning Report: Yahoo To Shutter App Built By The Founder Of A Different App It Bought Who Already Quit.”

Snark aside, this makes for a good moment to recall Yahoo’s startup buying spree. Here is Yahoo’s acquisition pace for a few years, to refresh your mind:

1. 2007: 6 companies.
2. 2008: 4 companies.
3. 2009: 1 company.
4. 2010: 5 companies.
5. 2011: 3 companies.
6. 2012: 2 companies.
7. 2013: 28 companies.
8. 2014: 18 companies.
9. 2015: 2 companies.
10. 2016: 0.
11. 2017: Itself.

So much for that strategy.

From the Crunchbase Daily:

Benchmark’s Gurley leaves Uber board

• Bill Gurley, the venture capitalist who led a push to oust Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, has stepped down from the ride-hailing company’s board of directors. He will be replaced by Matt Cohler, another partner at Gurley’s firm Benchmark.

Snap buys social map tool Zenly

• Snap has acquired Zenly, a developer of social mapping tools, for between $250 million and $350 million, TechCrunch reports. The startup’s technology is being used in a new Snap feature called Snap Map. Paris-based Zenly, founded in 2015, previously raised $35 million in venture funding.

JD.com tosses $397M into Farfetch

• Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com is investing $397 million into online luxury retailer Farfetch as part of what’s described as a broader partnership to expand that latter’s reach in China. London-based Farfetch, which features online boutiques of high-end fashion designers, previously raised more than $300 million.

Brick and mortar gets a tech boost, too

• E-commerce may be seeing faster growth, but venture capitalists are still bullish on potential for technology to spur brick and mortar sales. Startups working on tools for traditional retailers raised over $380 million in 2016 and have pulled in over $130 million so far this year, according to a Crunchbase News analysis. In other news, we look at what’s behind the sluggish pace of tech IPOs this year.