Pocket

Eighteen years of saved-for-later, gone before you read it

Shut down
19902026

Pocket began in 2007 as Read It Later, a Firefox extension by a self-taught Minnesota developer that saved articles for reading when you had time, synced to your phone, stripped to clean text. Renamed Pocket in 2012 and bought by Mozilla in 2017, it passed a billion saves and became the save-for-later standard. Mozilla shut it down on 8 July 2025.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2007
  2. August 2007 Launch
    Read It Later appears

    A Firefox extension for the article you cannot read right now.

  3. 2012
  4. 17 April 2012 Rebrand
    Renamed Pocket

    Free, on every platform, with a save button in other people's apps.

  5. 2014
  6. May 2014 Peak
    One billion saves

    The queue becomes the standard home for deferred reading.

  7. 2017
  8. 27 February 2017 Acquisition
    Mozilla buys Pocket

    Its first acquisition. Pocket recommendations move into Firefox.

  9. 2025
  10. 22 May 2025 Shutdown announced
    Mozilla announces the end

    Pocket and Fakespot are cut so Firefox can have the focus.

  11. 8 July 2025 Shutdown
    Pocket closes

    Exports run until 8 October 2025, then the saved lists are deleted.

The site through time

Browse getpocket.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2007 2010 2013 2016 2019 2022 2025 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Nate Weiner (Read It Later, Inc.) 2007–2017 Founded A Firefox extension that grew into the save-for-later standard
Mozilla 2017–2025 Acquisition Bought Pocket for its reach and recommendations, closed it in 2025

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Downloads ▲ 1 billion May 2014 Confirmed Cumulative saves announced by Pocket in May 2014

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Mozilla announced on 22 May 2025 that Pocket would shut down on 8 July 2025, saying the way people use the web had evolved and that it was concentrating investment on Firefox. Saved article lists could be exported until 8 October 2025, after which the data was deleted.

Our analysis: Pocket solved a real problem of the article-centric web: too much worth reading, found at the wrong moment. Mozilla bought it for its recommendation technology and its foothold beyond the browser, then never quite decided what it was for. When the money got tight, an adjacent product with a modest subscriber base lost to the core one, which is the usual end for beloved side products.

History [edit]

Read it later

Nate Weiner built Read It Later in 2007 as a Firefox extension from his apartment, to scratch the obvious itch of the article web: you find things worth reading exactly when you cannot read them. The extension saved a page with one click; the apps that followed synced the queue to your phone and stripped articles to clean, offline text. By 2011 the one-person extension had become a venture-funded company, and in April 2012 it relaunched as Pocket, free, with the save button spreading through other people's apps, Twitter clients above all.

The queue crossed a billion saves in 2014. Pocket at its best was the web's civilised mode: no feed, no autoplay, just the things you had chosen, readable on a train with no signal.

Mozilla's turn

Mozilla integrated Pocket into Firefox in 2015, to some user grumbling about bundled services, and in February 2017 bought the company outright, its first acquisition, keeping the team and open-sourcing parts of the code. Pocket's recommendations came to fill Firefox's new-tab page, and a premium subscription carried the business.

The end came the way these ends usually do. On 22 May 2025 Mozilla announced that Pocket would close on 8 July 2025, alongside its Fakespot experiment, saying the way people used the web had evolved and Firefox needed the focus and the money. Users had until 8 October to export eighteen years of saved articles, after which the data was deleted. The farewell page on getpocket.com opens, in its own words, with "So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen".

What Pocket proved outlived it: reader modes, reading queues and send-to-device are in every browser now. The dedicated home for the habit is gone, and the export files it left behind are lists of URLs, a fair share of which no longer resolve either.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Read It Later raises $2.5 million TechCrunch 26 July 2011 [archived]
  2. Mozilla acquires Pocket The Verge 27 February 2017 [archived]
  3. What you need to know about Pocket shutting down Mozilla 22 May 2025 [archived]

Last verified: 14 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).