Social reading platform, Readmill, on Friday announced it has been acquired by Cloud Storage firm, Dropbox, and will be shutting down its service soon.
The Berlin-based startup confirmed the news on its blog noting that users will no longer be able to create a new account and that current customers will have time until July 1st to transition their account from the popular iOS and Android ebook reading app to another service.
The company’s statement read “Readmill’s story ends here. Many challenges in the world of ebooks remain unsolved, and we failed to create a sustainable platform for reading. For this, we’re deeply sorry. We considered every option before making the difficult decision to end the product that brought us together.”
With the Readmill app, users could read their favourite eBooks and then share extracts with their friends and followers. They could even share highlights to external social networks.
TechCrunch was the first to report the ‘acqui-hire’ deal. Although financial details of the deal are yet to be officially announced the report claims that the deal could cost Dropbox somewhere around $8 million.
As part of the deal Dropbox will shut down Readmill and the company’s the 11-person team, including founders Henrik Berggren and David Kjelkerud will join the cloud storage firm.
“Our team will be joining Dropbox, where our expertise in reading, collaboration and syncing across devices finds a fitting home. Millions of people use Dropbox to store and share their digital lives, and we believe it’s a strong foundation on which to build the future of reading. We’re delighted to work alongside this talented team and imagine new ways to read together,” the startup added on its blog.
