Moreover Acquired by Verisign

Tom Formeski over at SiliconValleyWatcher reports that the rumored Moreover deal is done and the buyer isn't someone anyone I know was guessing:

VeriSign is about to announce it acquired Moreover Technologies, the San Francisco based news aggregator. The acquisition price is around $25m according to SVW sources.

I have to confess that I don't quite get this deal.  Moreover seems pretty far afield from Verisign's existing lines of business that focus primarily on infrastructure.  Tom analyzes it this way:

The move by Verisign signals an ambition to aggregate a catalog of infrastructure capabilities such as security, content, and authentication services used by many large commercial web sites.

It is also interesting to note that Moreover went for far less than Topix.net, which garnered investments from Gannett, Knight-Ridder, and Tribune totaling about $50 million for 75 percent of that company.  The businesses are similar.  Moreover has a more established brand, while the publishing companies seemed most interested in Topix.net's technology for local targeting of ads and content.

It would be intriguing to know what Moreover's balance sheet looks like and how that may have affected the difference in valuation, especially Moreover seems to have more prominent business deals in place -- the question is are they revenue generators for the company or mere PR ploys?

UPDATE: Rafat over at PaidContent has more on the deal, including that Google made a last minute bid.

Comments

[Bud]

Seems to me like a purchase (Moreover) is a very different story than an investment (Topix). VCs will pay all sorts of valuations, whereas cash is cash.

[Chip Griffin]

Perhaps, but the companies that purchased 75 percent of Topix paid cash and certainly aren't in the business of venture capital generally. It is probably more fair to term it an acquisition rather than an investment, at least based on what is publicly known.