Yahoo has acquired its second company of the day, Google-ITA powered flight rewards app MileWise.
Just after it was revealed that GoPollGo had been snapped up and shut down by Yahoo, MileWise made its own announcement via its site. It says:
“MileWise began almost four years ago with the goal of creating a simple, powerful product to help people and providers get the most value out of their rewards. Along the way, we’ve been lucky to connect with an incredible community of fellow travelers, without whom we wouldn’t have made it this far.
To everyone who took MileWise for a spin: THANK YOU! You shared our vision of what MileWise could become, and generously donated your time and passion towards making it a reality.”
So, MileWise has confirmed it will be closing down, and says it will be making it as easy as possible for users to take their data with them. “We’ll be sending everyone an email with instructions on exporting your data, and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to email us,” it says.
This is essentially an acqui-hire of the MileWise team, which will now be joining Yahoo in its NYC office, though it doesn’t say exactly what it will be working on. It’s a fair guess it will be travel-related, however. “We’re thrilled to be joining such a talented group of inventors, and can’t wait to get working on the next big thing coming out of Yahoo,” the company’s statement says.
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Back in October, we reported that MileWise had cut a deal with Google-ITA to power key features across its service. This was the second deal announced by Google-ITA to distribute flight fare data, having previously partnered with travel site Hipmunk to power its own fare results, just before ITA was acquired by Google back in June 2010.
Then just before Christmas, MileWise rolled out a handful of new features to its iOS app, including ComboFares and price alerts.
ITA is essentially a source of flight information and fares, which is why Google wanted to get these guys on board for its myriad of flight information sites and services. One of ITA’s first products was an airfare search and pricing system called QPX, which is now used by travel firms such as Orbitz, Bing Travel, Kayak.com, US Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Alitalia, and others.
Yahoo has been on something of an acquisition rampage of late, snapping up to-do list app Astrid last week, which was preceded by personalized recommendation startup Jybe, as well as news summary app Summly.
The one thing all the acquisitions have in common is all services were shuttered, while details around the financials were never officially confirmed. Yahoo is clearly on a big talent-recruitment offensive, and there’s every chance more of such deals will follow.
Top Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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