Microsoft Buys Email App Acompli For $200M, Will Still Support Gmail And Other Competitors

Just before Thanksgiving here in the U.S., a Microsoft blog post accidentally leaked the company�s intention to buy mobile email application Accomplice. Though the blog post itself was pulled down, the URL still revealed the forthcoming acquisition. Today, the two companies are officially confirming the news, with the Accomplice team of around two dozen joining Microsoft as a part of a $200 million+ deal.

Recode was first to report the $200 million figure, and we�ve also confirmed. We�ve also heard this was an all-cash deal.

�18 months ago we started building a team and a product around the idea that we could make mobile email better,� reads an Acompli blog post announcing the news. �Today that journey continues as part of a larger organization with the technology, talent, and market reach that will help us take the vision of Acompli to hundreds of millions of mobile users across the world.�

Accomplice, for those unfamiliar, was backed by $7.3 million for its mobile email app designed for a professional user base who need better tools for managing email, calendaring and file sharing while on the go.

At Microsoft, Acompli will work within the Office 365 organization and will function as an independent group building out mobile email products for iOS and Android. Though the app already supported Microsoft Exchange email as well as Office 365 for file access, its integration within the larger organization will open itself to even more opportunities to tie the two businesses and their products together.

What�s interesting, however, is that there are no plans to terminate support for competing email services in the Acompli application. Today, the app supports Exchange, Gmail and Google Apps, iCloud, and Yahoo, for example. And many of Acompli�s earliest users are those who took advantage of Microsoft�s competitors� products. In other words, that means Microsoft is now in the business of running an email client app that supports business customers who have �gone Google,� so to speak, or who don�t utilize Microsoft�s email (Exchange or Outlook.com/MSN/Hotmail), or its cloud services.

That�s a big shift for the company. It�s hard to imagine the Microsoft of just two years ago making this kind of deal.

Of course, what Microsoft is interested in is the business potential for Acompli. Before talks between the two companies got started, Acompli already had several enterprise pilot programs in the works with Fortune 500 companies. The eventual goal was to put these big businesses on a premium tier, where they would help the startup generate revenue. (It�s currently a free app offering for download on iTunes and Google Play.)

As for how Acompli is being tied into Microsoft going forward, a lot of the details are still being ironed out, including whether it will be rebranded, or sold alongside other Microsoft products as a part of a bundle deal. But Acompli for now is remaining focused on email, not other parts of an online productivity suite. Email will remain the heart of what it does, and its other features like calendaring or file-sharing spin off from that.

Microsoft is paying very close attention to the mobile space, and as this acquisition shows, it�s thinking about how it can compete without isolating itself from the larger ecosystem, as in the past. That�s a huge shift indicting some fresher thinking for the Redmond giant, and not the first of its kind either. Microsoft and Dropbox also recently announced a partnership focused on deeper integrations between the two companies, despite Microsoft owning a direct Dropbox competitor with OneDrive.

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What�s Next For Firefox?

When historians look at the history of the Web ten or twenty years from now, chances are they will point to Firefox as one of the most important products of the last ten years. But right now, it�s hard not to look at Firefox and worry a little bit about its future.

At the height of its success, around 2010/11, Firefox owned more than a quarter of the browser market in the U.S. and almost a third in Europe. Today, those numbers are much lower in most regions (though Germans still love Firefox more than any other browser). The exact numbers always depend on who you ask, but the trend is the same everywhere � and it�s not looking good for Mozilla�s browser.

Google�s Chrome launched at a time when Firefox development felt stagnant. I remember firing up Chrome for the first time back in 2008 and being astonished by how fast it was. I had been a long-time Firefox user at that time and Chrome � even in those early betas � blew it away. Much has changed since then and when it comes to speed, Firefox is now comparable again to Chrome (and it even outperforms it on some benchmarks). Firefox had left an opening for Chrome and Google marched right through it.

Things on the desktop aren�t looking great for Firefox, but Mozilla is also at best an also-ran on mobile. Apple didn�t allow third-party browser engines on its platform during the early days and even as Android gained in popularity, it still took Mozilla a while to launch a useful version of Firefox on that platform. Then, over the last few years, Mozilla tried to make up ground by launching its own platform. That was an audacious effort and I can only laud it for its effort to bring low-cost phones to developing countries � but so far, that effort has barely paid off except for in a couple of very small markets (and now that there are plenty of cheap Android phones around, I doubt it stands much of a chance in those markets either).

In many ways, it feels like the Firefox team is mostly fighting a battle of perceptions. Ask anybody why they don�t use Firefox and they�ll say: �It�s too slow.� That�s not actually the case anymore. Like Microsoft with IE, Mozilla now has to convince people that its browser is quite good again. Unlike Microsoft, it doesn�t have a marketing budget to do that (and it�s not like Microsoft�s IE campaigns have really made a difference either).

firefox-yahooMozilla has now partnered with Yahoo to power its search in the U.S. starting next month. And while Yahoo may not be the down-and-out company it seemed to be just a few years ago, it�s not exactly a powerhouse when it comes to search. This deal may gain Yahoo a few extra searchers, but it probably isn�t going to help Mozilla gain market share (because nobody is looking for a browser with built-in Yahoo search).

Maybe Mozilla is okay with all of this. It�s a non-profit organization that aims to make the web a better place and the web is a better place today thanks to the work Mozilla does. But what power does the organization have if its main product continues to lose importance? It�s easy to convince others to follow your lead when you own a large slice of a market, but when that number goes down to ten percent, it�s all too easy for others to ignore you.