The news that Yahoo is buying Artifact shook up technology yesterday. Artifact was an interesting app that used artificial intelligence to help its users find and consume more and more specific news. It had some devoted followers, but never reached the scale that would have made it an attractive long-term project. So, the instagram founders who created it decided to close the service.
Then TechCrunch's parent company, Yahoo, decided to take over its technology. It doesn't take long for the app itself to reach the world, but the deal is still an echo of an earlier era when Yahoo was famous for buying smaller mobile-focused companies.
Whether or not you were an Artifact user (I was for a while), it's important that Yahoo still feels greedy under its current ownership structure. After all, Artifact isn't the only startup project on the market today that could be looking for a new home.
