Here's a surprise: We're in the 3
rd WebRTC acquisition. This time, it is Yahoo who is snatching OnTheAir.
The craziness continues. We had
Telefonica and TokBox, then
Jive and Meetings.io and now it is
Yahoo wit OnTheAir. While Mashable thinks this is about mobile – I am not so sure.
OnTheAir is a young company that did something similar to Meetings.io – they built a Google-Hangout-like platform. This kind of work requires media processing in order to scale nicely.
I haven't had the chance to reach out to the team of OnTheAir to check out their platform and do an interview, which is quite a shame – it means there's not a lot I can say about this acquisition.
What strikes me the most here is the trend – it is the second time in a row that a startup using WebRTC is taken off the market before it had any time to mature. Someone really needs this WebRTC technology.
I wonder who the next acquirer will be – or the next acquired company for that matter… If I had to bet, then it will be on another social network vendor (not sure if a platform like Jive or a service like Facebook) and the target would be a WebRTC point-to-point calling service.
Only time will tell. And with the speed at which these companies are being acquired – next week seems like a good bet.
Time for your bets:
- Who should acquire a WebRTC company?
- Which WebRTC company should be acquired next?
