Internet services company VeriSign Inc. said Monday it has acquired news aggregator Moreover Technologies Inc. for $30 million in cash to bolster its position as an organizer and gatekeeper of information flowing on the Internet.
Moreover Technologies, a closely held San Francisco-based company, gathers and filters online news and blogs, then automatically parcels the information in a headline-like format, also known as RSS feeds, to corporate customers, such as Microsoft Corp.'s MyMSN.
The buyout comes just 10 days after Mountain View-based VeriSign said it acquired Weblogs.com from Scripting News Inc. for $2.3 million in cash. Weblogs.com provides subscribers automatic notification of new material on Web sites and online journals known as blogs.
For VeriSign, a company that handles Web domain registrations and provides authentication technology for online transactions, both investments are smart moves in a growing field of real-time distribution of Web content, said Allen Weiner, an industry analyst with Gartner Inc.
"VeriSign has been the hallmark of bringing organization to the Web, and this extends their play into this new arena," Weiner said. "This will help keep track of what's new and fresh out there."
Mark McLaughlin, a VeriSign senior vice president, said the company has been watching the recent explosion of so-called real-time information, distributed in the format called really simple syndication, or RSS, and saw a lack of technological infrastructure there.
"We want to provide not just infrastructure, but intelligence to the information to make it relevant," McLaughlin said.