Yahoo has quietly purchased e-mail software company Stata Labs, in what could be an investment in a coming PC search tool to rival Google and Microsoft.
Stata Labs sells an e-mail application called Bloomba, that lets people search message text and attachments. Yahoo apparently bought the underlying technology of Stata Labs and does not intend to continue sales of Bloomba.
The acquisition comes only a week after Yahoo rival Google unveiled new technology that allows people to search data in e-mail, Word documents and Web pages. Microsoft also has designs to integrate desktop, e-mail and Web search from the operating system, and toward that end it recently bought a small e-mail search company called Lookup.