14 DAY TRIAL // The company behind the popular adblocker Adblock Plus has announced it is acquiring Flattr, a payment company built by Peter Sunde, one of the Pirate Bay cofounders.
Eyeo, the parent company of Adblock Plus, has not revealed the price it agreed to pay for Flattr.
The move doesn't come as much of a surprise given the strong ties between the two companies. Flattr had been working with Adblock Plus for a while now on a service called Flattr Plus, which is a browser extension allowing users to pay online creators for access to whatever content they put out.
Even though the extension was announced last May, it has yet to be released, with its website still asking users to sign up for early access. Hopefully, now that the acquisition is taking place, the process will speed up a bit.
Likeminded companies
"At eyeo we’ve always looked for ways to make the web more fair and less annoying. We started with Adblock Plus, which helped pioneer the idea of constructive ad blocking: letting in better, more respectable ads that ad blocking users accept. Flattr makes micropayments automatic and effortless, thus it will be the most user-friendly payment solution on the internet. Together, constructive ad blocking and Flattr complete eyeo’s vision of putting users in control of an internet that is fair and still profitable," says Till Faida, founder of eyeo.
For his part, Peter Sunde says the two companies share almost identical values of making the Internet safe and fair for everyone. "We're excited to continue our work on the Flattr project to give back control to the users of the Internet," he added.
Following the acquisition, Sunde will continue on as an advisor, while Eyeo will retain the core Flattr staff in Sweden. Linus Olsson, cofounder, will continue to lead operations.