Yahoo (YHOO) has purchased web-based email provider Zimbra, Kara Swisher is reporting. Mike Arrington has Om distracted judging at his TechCrunch40 conference, but says the price is $350 million.
Update: We just talked to a company spokesperson who confirmed the deal and the purchase price, adding that it was mostly in cash.
Yahoo had only just rolled out a major overhaul to its popular mail service, based on its $30 million acquisition of Oddpost in 2004.
When Om gets out, he’ll add to the story. In the past he had called Zimbra “email done right” and “quite impressive actually.” Some of us use it internally at GigaOM.
Zimbra had some six million users as of May. Yahoo Mail has more than 250 million.
Zimbra has raised about $30 million, and recently did a deal with Comcast (CMCSA) to offer its services to Comcast’s 12.5 million broadband customers.
18 comments so far
12:57 PM PT
Wow, that is huge and a major shot in the arm for Yahoo. The only thing that would get me (and possibly many others) off Gmail would be a hosted reliable Zimbra solution running on network resources that Yahoo can provide. It is by far the best webmail application.
1:18 PM PT
Interesting acquisition. Wonder if this is an effort to replace outdated Yahoo mail or to compete with Google and Microsoft in Application Space.
Also interesting would be how well and quickly they can integrate Zimbra.
1:20 PM PT
Yahoo! drops $350m on Zimbra; an open source, enterprise RIA
It’s official; Yahoo! has acquired open-source enterprise email vendor Zimbra for $350 million in cash. The company’s alternative to Microsoft’s Exchange server includes: webmail a desktop client contact management calendaring word processing spread…
1:29 PM PT
Maybe Y! Mail will implement a spam filter that actually works. The old web-based mail is archaic, the new “beta” mail is too slow, and the spam filtering is awful all around. I’m sure it’ll take Y! a long, long time to integrate this into Y! Mail. I’ll stick with Gmail for now. In 18 months, when Y! actually does something with this acquisition, I’ll take a peak back at Y! Mail and probably laugh.
2:07 PM PT
[...] GigaOM also has a post on this. [...]
2:13 PM PT
[...] It’s confirmed, Yahoo! acquired Zimbra for $350M as blogged here and here. [...]
2:26 PM PT
The Zimbra hosting provider and integrator 01.com has published a blog article about the prospective impact on Zimbra partners:
http://blog.01.com/?p=325
4:34 PM PT
Great move by Yahoo! Wonder if the Zimbra team is locked in for a year or more? Their talent would be a strong shot into Yahoo’s DNA.
7:04 PM PT
[...] and it is now confirmed that Yahoo has purchased Zimbra for $350 million. Surprise surpirse, GigaOm confirms the purchase price is mostly cash. Yahoo is clearly moving in Yahoo 2.0 direction snapping [...]
5:42 AM PT
[...] Perhaps with this acquisation, Zimbra should be able to capitalise on a wider market and stick their identity to bring this technology closer to the community. If not there will be a better replacement from the community itself! Read it more here. [...]
7:20 AM PT
Zimbra has a huge following in the higher-education market, and is increasingly popular on Mac servers. Let’s hope Yahoo continues the magic.
10:03 AM PT
[...] by Om Malik Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 10:03 AM PT | No comments A $350 million buyout of Zimbra by Yahoo (YHOO), Thunderbird being spun out as an independent entity by Mozilla, and the impressive launch of San [...]
6:14 PM PT
[...] Yahoo has bought Zimbra for $350 million. Zimbra is an open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange, but through the web. It is, in other words, a fancy web-based email service. I’m left wondering why Yahoo wanted these guys, but we shall see. Maybe they are looking to outdo Google with a real piece of software that is more robust than Google Apps. [...]
8:25 AM PT
[...] June 18, when Yang took over as CEO, the company has spent around $700 million on new companies, shut down some minor projects, shaken up the sales staff, and gotten rid of Lloyd [...]
9:30 PM PT
[...] services. The biggest opportunity, however, seems to be in hosted email, as Yahoo’s (YHOO) $350 million bet on Zimbra and Google’s (GOOG) Apps initiative [...]
2:14 AM PT
[...] Yahoo Buys Zimbra for $350M in Cash « GigaOM [...]
5:15 AM PT
[...] $100M-$500M, 2007, officeAcquisition date: 09/17/2007 Acquisition info: link Price: $350 Million Profile: Zimbra, a Yahoo! company, is the leader in open source, [...]
9:01 AM PT
[...] source online and offline office software. Press Release | TechCrunch | GigaOm| Mashable | [...]
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