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WordPress and Tumblr owner Automattic<\/a> has bought Beeper, the maker of the Beeper Mini app<\/a> that challenged Apple\u2019s iMessage dominion late last year. Although it ultimately lost that battle<\/a> (after, oh, about three days), the incident gave the DOJ more ammunition<\/a> in its antitrust suit<\/a> against the iPhone maker. Bloomberg<\/em> reported<\/a> on Tuesday that Automattic paid $125 million, a surprisingly hefty price for the startup.<\/p>\n Automattic already has an app called Texts<\/a> that taps into the APIs of various chat services for a universal messaging experience. Beeper has essentially the same mission and branding, and the two competitors will now merge their teams under Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky, who will join Automattic.<\/p>\n You may also remember Migicovsky as the creator of the Pebble smartwatch<\/a>, the charmingly simple pre-Apple Watch device that helped kickstart mainstream interest<\/a> in wearable tech in the early 2010s. On Tuesday, he told<\/a> The New York Times<\/em> that Beeper and Texts will launch a combined service later this year. The two teams will reportedly begin work in two weeks during a meeting in Portugal.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Migicovsky wrote<\/a> in a blog post that the two companies go way back. \u201cMatt [Mullenweg], Automattic\u2019s CEO, and I have known each other for years,\u201d he wrote. \u201cHe was an early user, supporter and investor in Beeper. We\u2019re very well aligned on our goal (build the best chat app on earth), approach (open source where possible), and independence (Beeper will operate independently as part of Automattic\u2019s Other Bets division).\u201d<\/p>\n Automattic\u2019s buying price is a bit of a head-scratcher, considering Beeper Mini\u2019s claim to fame \u2014\u00a0iMessage integration on Android \u2014 was squashed after only a few days in the spotlight. Beeper framed the brief showdown<\/a> as a fight for open, secure messaging standards. (It also helped the startup make more of a name for itself.) Apple saw it as a threat to one of its walled garden\u2019s main attractions: the iPhone-to-iPhone chats\u2019 blue bubbles with features like reactions and higher-resolution image and video-sharing.<\/p>\n Another reason to question Automattic\u2019s acquisition price is Apple\u2019s plan to bring RCS (rich communication services) support to iPhones<\/a> later this year. Although the bubbles will remain green between iPhone and Android users, RCS chats replicate much of the iMessage appeal with a similar feature set, including end-to-end encryption.<\/p>\n Automattic\u2019s interim chief executive, Toni Schneider, told The NYT<\/em> that he sees the regulatory tradewinds blowing in a more open direction that will favor cross-platform, universal messaging apps like Beeper. Still, from my understanding, tapping into other services\u2019 APIs is something the right coders could easily duplicate (including the Texts team Automattic already owned). Perhaps the real main attraction was the brand Beeper built for itself in taking on Apple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n