Furl, the website bookmarking and archiving service, has been bought by LookSmart. Mike Giles, founder & CEO of Furl, announced the acquisition today by email to Furl members. In his message, he said:
The primary reason we sold the company was that we have always believed Furl makes the most sense as part of a larger search offering. We negotiated with several large public search companies and ultimately chose LookSmart. We truly believe this acquisition is in the best interest of our members and of the long-term longevity of the service. We use Furl, too, and want it to continue to grow for many years to come.
Giles explains that the deal with LookSmart will enable Furl to offer each member 5 gig of storage space for archived pages, and that the service will remain free, supported by advertising revenues. Further development will include “a groups feature, and the ability to search across all public archives”.