News that Yahoo is buying Artifact stirred the technology watercooler yesterday. Artifact was an interesting app, employing AI to help its users find and consume more, and more targeted news. It had some devoted fans, but never reached the sort of scale that would have made it an attractive long-term project. So, the Instagram founders who built it decided to sunset the service.
Then TechCrunch’s parent company Yahoo decided to snap up its technology. The app itself isn’t long for the world, but all the same the deal is an echo of an older time when Yahoo was famous for buying smaller, mobile-focused companies.
Regardless of whether or not you were an Artifact user — I was for a time — that Yahoo is still feeling acquisitive under its current ownership structure matters. Artifact is hardly the only startup project in the market today that might be looking for a new home, after all.