Why is Yahoo! buying Summly, an app by 17-year-old

BANGALORE, INDIA: At 15, Nick D'Aloisio developed the Summly app and at 17, he could be a millionaire.

That's an incredible story of a tech wizard from London. His app Summly is now being acquired by Yahoo!, which announced it on its blog.

In a world of constant information, Yahoo feels the need to simplify the way how stories are searched. "Mobile devices are shifting our daily routines, and users have changed not only what, but how much information they consume. Yet most articles and web pages were formatted for browsing with mouse clicks. The ability to skim them on a phone or a tablet can be a real challenge -- we want easier ways to identify what's important to us," said Yahoo.

Nick and the Summly team will join Yahoo! in the coming weeks. Summly, which was on iOS, will be removed from there. When you open the Summly page you get a note from its founder Nick. "When I founded Summly at 15, I would have never imagined being in this position so suddenly. I'd personally like to thank Li Ka-Shing and Horizons Ventures for having the foresight to back a teenager pursuing his dream," he says. "We will be removing Summly from the App Store today but expect our summarization technology will soon return to multiple Yahoo! products."

What actually worked for Nick was that Summly had bagged the Apple's Best Apps of 2012 award for Intuitive Touch! And it had 90 million summaries read in just a few short months.

Summly delivers snapshots of stories, giving you a simple and elegant way to find the news you want.

Though, Yahoo! didn't disclose the price of buying summly, AllthingsD put it at $30 million. It's clear that Yahoo! and CEO Marissa Mayer intent to take on Facebook and Google though more acquistions.

According to a Reuters report, Mayer wants to make Yahoo's properties much more interactive, on PCs and on mobile devices, using social media tools to personalize the user experience and new technology to boost advertising sales.