Type of business | Private |
---|---|
Founded | 2012 |
Dissolved | 2016 |
Headquarters | New York City, New York , United States |
Owner | Alphabet Inc. |
Founder(s) | Eric Stromberg, Andrew Brown, Willem Van Lancker |
Key people | Eric Stromberg, Andrew Brown, Willem Van Lancker |
Industry | Publishing, eBooks |
URL | www |
Users | 100,000 subscribers (September 2015) |
Launched | 6 September 2013 |
Oyster was a commercial streaming service for digital e-books, available for Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, and NOOK HD/HD+ devices. It was also available on any web browser on a desktop or laptop computer. Oyster held over 1 million books in its library, and as of September 2015, the service was only available in the United States.[1]
In September 2015, Google acquired Oyster.[2] No terms were disclosed but speculation put the price at somewhere between $20 million and $30 million.[3] As a part of the acquisition it was reported that the founders would be leading Google Play Books in New York. In conjunction with the acquisition, Oyster shut down its existing service in early 2016.[4]