Yahoo buys 17-year British whiz-kid's news summary app for reported $30 mn
26 Mar 2013
A 17-year old British programming whiz-kid has sold his news-reading app, Summly, to US Internet giant Yahoo, for a reported $30 million, making him the richest high school student in the UK.
Though Yahoo did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, technology blog AllThingsD reported that the California-based company paid around $30 million.
Apart from pocketing the millions, Nick D'Aloisio, a resident of South West London, has landed with a job at Yahoo's London office, where he will work at morning, while simultaneously attending Wimbledon's King's College school in the evening.
Last year D'Aloisio invented Summly, a software that automatically reduces lengthy news stories and features into a user-friendly format on an iPhone.
The app, which is also used by News Corp, has already been downloaded almost a million times and had won one of Apple's best apps of 2012 awards.
According to D'Aloisio, Yahoo would use Summly to reinvent the delivery of information such as news, weather, stocks and finance for mobile devices.
