Huckabuck, the metasearch engine that searches Google, Yahoo, MSN, Technorati, Digg & del.icio.us, failed to be bought by anyone on eBay. The sale, which ended on eBay today at around 3PM EST had a highest bid of USD 10,100, which did not meet the reserve set by Huckabuck ($20,000).
Earlier this week we had posted news about iRows also looking for an exit strategy, and last month Kiko had a lucky escape(although they did work hard for it), when it was bought by Tucows. This seems to be trend, started off by Kiko, where developers trying to exit from their miserable present and work towards lucrative ventures. Skeptics of Web 2.0 are ready to proclaim how they always knew Web 2.0 bubble is going to burst soon.
Do we really have a Web 2.0 bubble? This is not year 1999 when companies were getting $50 million for deck of PowerPoint. Huckabuck never got a dime in funding and so is the case with most of the web 2.0 companies. I think this is just normal part of consolidation cycle in Technology sector, where Teams get together, create products, few are successful(del.icio.us, youtube, flickr, writely) and others are not. Those who fail want to quit earlier, than later, and move on to new ventures. Projects without any concrete business model are always bound for disaster, which is what happened with Kiko and now Huckabuck. It is good that Huckabuck realized that the direction they were headed to was difficult to reach. But at least they gave their best. It will be great for Huckabuck team if someone steps in and buys their technology.
Links:
Huckabuck
Huckabuck Blog
Tags: StartupSquad, web2.0, web_2.0, huckabuck, search
