All along I had been wondering why Yahoo hadn’t acquired Zoho (Online Office Suite) yet. In fact, back in July I asked this very question and I suggested that Yahoo seemed like a likely buyer because Microsoft has no need for them, and Google has their own Office Suite. Now I know that Yahoo had no need for Zoho - they were going after Zimbra, an Online Open Source Office Suite. TechCrunch just reported that Yahoo is set to announce their acquisition of Zimbra tonight for $350 million in cash.While Yahoo hasn’t made their official announcement yet, thus it hasn’t been confirmed, Arrington says that they got this information "through a very solid source."
Seeing as Zimbra is Open Source, it’s no surprise how versatile it is. Users on Windows, Apple, and Linux operating systems using browsers like Firefox, IE, and Safari are able to use their service. And the fact that their Desktop application offers both online and offline functionality makes it that much more appealing. They also make great use of Ajax in their applications which gives you a great experience. Their web client integrates a shared calendar, contacts, email, online document authoring, and more.
Aside from being known as one of the best open source options for messaging, collaboration, and reducing the need for Microsoft Outlook, Zimbra is also pretty well known because of the skins that you can make. Zimbra is very customizable and you can make it look nearly any way you’d want. To prove this, they made (for fun- not for us), a skin that looks like Gmail pictured to the right. Impressive, isn’t it?
There’s SO much that you can do with Zimbra and it’ll be interesting to see how Yahoo decides to use it. I also assume Yahoo intends to use Zimbra to directly compete with Google Apps, but we’ll just have to wait and see. When I look at Zimbra, I must say, it makes me wonder why Gmail and other mail services haven’t been able to do what Zimbra has done already by integrating all of their services together.
If you’d like to see what Zimbra is all about, you can try out this demo — no registration is required to do this.
Thanks “S” for the tip!
Enjoyed the post? Subscribe to our feed to get a daily dose of CyberNet!
Tags: Web Sites, Acquisition, AJAX, Applications, Google Apps, Online Office Suite, Yahoo, Zoho
Related Posts:
- Zimbra Desktop Launches with Offline Functionality
- Get $20 Million for your Yahoo photo!
- Is Yahoo Getting Ready To Acquire Meebo?
- Azureus Wins SourceForge.net Community Choice Award
- Rumors Running Rampant: Yahoo to Acquire MySpace?
Geez took um long enough….. But once again for yahoo to little to late…
Wow just went to there web site and in the upper left hand corner there was a Google Custom Search Engine. Guess that’ll be gone…..
Keep in mind though, Yahoo has pretty loyal users. If there are Yahoo users that have been using Google Apps, I could see them switching to the alternative, especially because Zimbra seems more impressive to me than Google Apps.
official announcement
http://www.zimbra.com/about/ya.....imbra.html
I tried the demo >doesn’t work in Opera. I’m pretty surprised that they got this, especially since they already revamped their mail service w/ the help of oddpost. I guess they’ll just use it for the office suite mainly? I didn’t even know Zimbra had an office suite. Why not just buy Zoho (must be cheaper)? I guess they’ll use this to try and bring Y!Mail offline?
Well I really didn’t see this one coming, so I wonder if Yahoo’s future webmail is going to be based on Zimbra.
Ah ha ha ha! That is actually really funny.
Yeah, I was disappointed too when I saw it didn’t work in Opera. I have still have a strong feeling that Yahoo! may buy Zoho, and combine the two to make an ultra competitive suite.
I don’t think that will be the case since they spent so much time working on the Yahoo! Mail Beta, but this is a great solution to compete with Google Apps. I actually think many aspects is better than what Google has to offer, and Zimbra’s current pricing is just about the same. And, of course, everything Zimbra has is perfectly integrated the way Google’s should be.
So Zimbra does have online office apps like word processing and spreadsheets, or not?
I think it is more like Google Gears. Here is what their site says: “Switch from online to offline mode seamlessly and automatically.”