Hoping to pave a new path to its popular Web site, Yahoo Inc. has acquired Konfabulator, a tiny software maker that provides a computer platform for monitoring the weather, stock prices and a wealth of other customized information without opening a Web browser.
The deal, finalized late last week for an undisclosed price, gives Yahoo access to a toolbox of mini-applications — known as widgets — that have built a cult following since Palo Alto-based Konfabulator first introduced them for Apple Computer Inc.’s Macintosh in 2002.
Apple liked the concept so much that it includes a widgets dashboard in the Mac’s operating system. With just three employees, Konfabulator designs its widget software to run on the ubiquitous Windows operating system as well.
The widgets are designed to make it easy for outsiders to develop and share new applications — a concept that Yahoo wants to encourage as it experiments with new ways to make the wealth of information on its Web site more useful, said Toni Schneider, vice president of the company’s developer network.
Konfabulator’s widgets can be programmed to perform a wide variety of tasks. The most popular applications are local weather and stock quotes, Rose said, but third-party developers have developed thousands of other uses. The Yahoo deal “gives us whole new buckets of content to grab stuff from.” Rose said.
Yahoo! company executives said they would also be giving Konfabulator away for free, completely doing away with the $19.95USD currently charged for the product. Yahoo! said the reason they purchased Konfabulator was that they wanted an easy way to open up its APIs to the developer community and allow them easy access to the information on the Yahoo! Web site. In doing this, Widgets could be built without having to scrape sites in order to get information.
Update
You can now download the free Yahoo! Konfabulator here.
[…] It has been a booming year in the tech field. Apple made a few wishes come true this year with the Video iPod, Microsoft unveils the Xbox 360 on time (mind the bugs), Google tried IM, Yahoo! buys like crazy, Vista was introduced (couldn’t they think of a better name?), and much more. […]