Microsoft planning to buy Onfolio
Cambridge firm's software to beef up Windows toolbar
Onfolio Inc., a privately held Cambridge company that makes software enabling Web surfers to store pages, pictures, and other Internet content and retrieve it later, has been acquired by Microsoft Corp. for an undisclosed sum, the companies are expected to disclose this morning.
As part of the deal, Onfolio's browser-based software will become part of a new Windows Live Toolbar being offered as a free download, starting today, from the Microsoft website known as ideas.live.com. And Onfolio's founder, JJ Allaire, and his entire six-person team will pull up stakes in Cambridge and move to Microsoft offices in Redmond, Wash.
''This deal is an opportunity for us to get our work used by a lot of people and integrated with a very exciting strategy," Allaire said. ''I think the best place for us to be is side by side with all of the people we're working with" on the Windows Live team in Redmond.
Microsoft is scheduled to make its purchase of Onfolio public as part of a larger new search strategy being unveiled at this week's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego. Under that strategy, Microsoft, which has been struggling in the shadow of Google Inc. in the search space, will offer a new Windows Live online search service, a new live.com home page for its free Internet software products, and the new Windows Live toolbar that will be installed as an add-on to the company's Internet Explorer web browser.
Allaire, 36, who founded Onfolio in 2002 with his own money, will become the second leading Boston-area technologist to move to Redmond in the past year. Last March, Microsoft acquired Groove Networks, a collaboration software company in Beverly, in a $120 million deal that brought Groove founder Ray Ozzie to Redmond. Ozzie is currently serving as the Microsoft chief technical officer and the architect of its live services strategy, including Windows Live.
''It's always a loss when someone like JJ Allaire or Ray Ozzie leaves the area," said Joyce Plotkin, president of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. ''I've seen people leave to the West Coast, and I've seen people come back. I think the Massachusetts strategy has to be to focus on remaining a center for technology and innovation, and not agonize about every individual company decision."
Allaire, a native of Winona, Minn., renowned as a hands-on software developer, started working on the Onfolio application for managing search information shortly after he and his brother Jeremy sold their previous company, Allaire Corp. of Newton, which made website development tools, to Macromedia Inc. for $360 million in 2001.
Onfolio has been selling its software, initially released in 2004, for $30 for a personal edition, $99 for a professional edition, and $149 for a scientific and academic edition. As part of the Windows Live toolbar, however, it will now be free to all customers. Microsoft will make money from the toolbar services, which also include a weather report, a pop-up blocker, and an RSS program that collect news feeds, through advertising on its search service. Customers who downloaded the Onfolio software within the past 90 days will be offered a refund.
Allaire said Onfolio has worked since last spring to integrate Onfolio with Microsoft's desktop search offering. Onfolio has also worked with the Firefox open source web browser, though the version being introduced today will be available only with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Adam Sohn, Microsoft's director of global consumer marketing, said Onfolio will help Microsoft expand and redefine its search offering. ''We're beginning to look at search as a little more than typing in a couple of words and getting a whole bunch of links back," he said. ''We're thinking of it as helping people relate better to information."
Sohn said Microsoft is delighted to be able to lure Allaire and his team to Redmond. ''We get the benefits of real innovators to help us go out and change the world through software," he said. ''You just look at what is the best way for them to have the most impact on the business."
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com. 