Reuters: Technology News: Box acquires Crocodoc to expand document-viewing features

Reuters: Technology News Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Box acquires Crocodoc to expand document-viewing features May 9th 2013, 21:50 By Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO | Thu May 9, 2013 5:01pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Box Inc, a cloud-storage company, said on Thursday it has agreed to acquire Crocodoc, a small start-up that provides the technology behind document viewers found on some of the world's most popular websites, including Facebook and Dropbox. The acquisition would provide Box's users with more interactive features such as the ability to annotate documents or create slide shows, said Aaron Levied, Box's chief executive. Levied declined to disclose the terms of the deal. Crocodoc, a seven-person start-up founded in 2007 by four engineering students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had previously raised roughly $1 million from angel investors. At the heart of Crocodoc's technology is the ability to convert documents in such formats as Word and PDF into ones more suitable for the interactive Web. Crocodoc said its licensing deals with existing customers, which include LinkedIn Corp, would continue without interruption although the technology could be rebranded. Faced with competition from giants such as Microsoft Corp and Google Inc, young storage companies like Box and Dropbox in recent months have sought to differentiate themselves and aggressively flesh out their functionality through small acquisitions. Privately held Dropbox, one of Box's fiercest rivals, signaled it would also expand its offerings when in March it snapped up the design team behind Mailbox, an email app. (Reporting By Gerry Shih) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions