LookSmart buys Furl.net

LookSmart has purchased Furl.net, an Internet archiving service, in a bid to keep up with the latest innovations in Web search. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. LookSmart, a San Francisco-based Internet search company, suffered a major blow in the past year after losing its largest partner, Microsoft. With Furl.net, the company is betting on ever-more specialized tools for Web search to win new consumers and distribute its advertisements.

Furl.net's software lets people save full-text copies of any Web page, and then share or search their personal collection of Web documents. LookSmart plans to keep Furl.net as a free service and will offer 5GB of storage to people for keeping tens of thousands of documents. Companies, including Ask Jeeves and Amazon.com's A9.com, are developing and testing similar technology for Web surfers.