14 DAY TRIAL // Kevin Rose, cofounder of Digg and more recently creator of Oink, an app that was shut down five months after being launched, is said to have been hired by Google. Apparently, his new startup, Milk, was bought by Google altogether everyone there got a job at the Mountain View giant.
There's no official confirmation from neither side, but the news comes from several sources.
Rose left Digg, once the rising star of Silicon Valley, last year to pursue other interests, as the site was bleeding users and didn't seem to have a chance of ever regaining its status.
With Digg left to its own devices, Rose eventually created Milk an "app incubator." That was less than a year ago when Rose raised funding, $1.7 million, €1.3 million, from some 24 investors for his eight-person startup.
The startup launched its first product, Oink, five months ago. It was supposed to be an app that enabled users to rate anything they saw. It managed to get some 150,000 users in its first month, but that was its peak.
The app was shutdown a couple of days ago and there was speculation on what Rose might be doing next at his startup.
In surprising move, it seems he'll be doing nothing since he's joining Google. Facebook and Google were said to be engaged in a bitter bidding war for the company, both interested in the people working there.
The company is said to have gone for $15 million to $30 million, €11.5 million to €23 million. Employees, apparently eight of them, are getting between $1 million and $2 million, €766,000 to €1.53 million with the rest going to investors and to Rose who, presumably, has a bigger share. The numbers come from people close to the matter, but are still speculative.