Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, has acquired Beeper. As you may remember, Beeper is the company that briefly brought iMessage to Android, much to Apple's chagrin. The move comes as Automattic aims to become a one-stop solution for cross-platform messaging.
The deal was announced on Tuesday. Automattic will acquire the company for $125 million and absorb its 27 employees, Bloomberg reports. Beeper co-founder Eric Migikowski will also join Automattic and serve as the company's “head of messaging.”
In a conversation with Bloomberg, Migikovsky explained that Beeper's fight with Apple is one of the factors that has increased awareness of the company's mission:
“Basically, there is no open standard for chat, and we want to create one by connecting to legacy chat networks,” Migikovsky said in an interview.
Migicovsky said the fight with Apple “helped bring more attention to Beeper and confirmed that we needed to know who our friends were in this space.”
“Automattic is a big company, but they're not like big tech companies,” he said. “They know how to build the open source infrastructure to make the Internet open.”
As our friends at 9to5Google explained, Beeper will continue to operate independently, but will have “ ;behind it Automattic resources cost.” As part of the acquisition, Beeper is moving away from the waitlist model and making it available to everyone.
The acquisition of Beeper aligns with Automattic's goal of developing an all-in-one chat app. Back in October, the company also acquired Texts” incoming messaging application.
For more information, visit 9to5Google.
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