Xmarks
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Xmarks — originally launched as Foxmarks in 2006 by EFF co-founder Mitch Kapor — was a browser extension that synchronized bookmarks (and later passwords, open tabs, and browsing history) across Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. At its April 2009 peak it was one of the most popular Firefox add-ons, with over 150,000 downloads a week and almost 15 million total downloads. Foxmarks was relaunched under the Xmarks name in March 2009.
02 / Xmarks FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
In September 2010 the company announced it would discontinue the service: its purely voluntary-donations funding model was unsustainable — investors had put in $9 million with no return in sight — and it could no longer compete with synchronization built natively into Chrome and Firefox. A pledge drive for a paid premium tier bought time, and a last-minute rescue acquisition by LastPass in December 2010 kept the service alive for eight more years.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Foxmarks launched
EFF co-founder Mitch Kapor's Foxmarks launched its bookmark-syncing browser extension.
- Relaunched as Xmarks
Foxmarks was relaunched under the Xmarks name with new features like suggested bookmark tagging.
- Shutdown announced, then acquired
Announced it would discontinue the service in January 2011 for financial reasons; after a user pledge drive, LastPass acquired Xmarks on December 2, 2010.
- Final shutdown
LastPass (by then owned by LogMeIn) shut the Xmarks service down for good on May 1, 2018, to focus on password vaulting.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Investors had put about $9 million into Xmarks by October 2010, with no return in sight.
- 02
LastPass acquired Xmarks in December 2010 for an undisclosed sum, keeping the free service and adding a $12-per-year premium tier.
- 03
The service ran under LastPass (later LogMeIn) until it was shut down on May 1, 2018.
- 04
No audited loss figure was ever published for Xmarks; the $9 million was invested capital, not a loss measure, so loss_amount is left null.