Yahoo Inc. announced Friday that it has purchased Israeli startup RayV in order to provide its users with better entertainment.
The terms of the deal, which was reported to be in the works in May, were not revealed by the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"This deal demonstrates our dedication to accelerating our video strategy and boosting our underlying technology infrastructure in the space," Yahoo said.
RayV, which has been around for eight years, works to stream high-quality video to customers online and on mobile devices on a large scale, and its team will continue its work at Yahoo's research and development center in Tel Aviv, CNET reported.
Yahoo's purchase follows several moves made by the company to get more involved in online media, which include its recent announcement of bringing back popular former NBC sitcom "Community."
The company announced in April that it was developing two 30-minute original series, one of which will be directed by Paul Feig, who directed the film "Bridesmaids" and created the TV show "Freaks and Geeks." At the same time it also announced its partnership with events promoter LiveNation, which will enable Yahoo to stream a concert a day for the next several years that will be sponsored by a variety of companies, including Kelloggs. Yahoo also said on Friday that performances by Dave Matthews Band, John Legend and other artists will be featured at its new music channel debuting on July 15th.
"The RayV team shares our passion for innovation and commitment to build a video infrastructure to deliver the ultimate video experience to our users," P.P.S. Narayan, head of Yahoo's cloud platforms, wrote in a blog post while announcing the deal. "We are focused on building a video offering that delivers best-in-class quality and content, and can be streamed on-demand and live, on all platforms."
