LON­DON–One of Britain's youngest In­ter­net en­tre­pre­neurs has hit the jack­pot af­ter sell­ing his top-sell­ing mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion Summ­ly to search gi­ant Ya­hoo.Sev­en­teen-year-old Nick d'Aloisio, who dreamed up the idea for the con­tent-short­en­ing pro­gram when he was study­ing for his ex­ams, said he was sur­prised by the deal. As with its oth­er re­cent ac­qui­si­tions, Ya­hoo didn't dis­close how much it is pay­ing for Summ­ly, al­though British news­pa­pers sug­gest­ed the deal's val­ue at sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars.

"I would have nev­er imag­ined be­ing in this po­si­tion so sud­den­ly," he wrote on his Web site, be­fore thank­ing his fam­i­ly, his school–and his ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist backer Li Ka-Shing–for sup­port­ing him.Summ­ly works by con­dens­ing con­tent so read­ers can scroll through more in­for­ma­tion more quick­ly–use­ful for the small screens of smart­phones.

The deal is Ya­hoo's fifth small ac­qui­si­tion in the past five months. All of them have been part of CEO Maris­sa May­er's ef­fort to at­tract more en­gi­neers with ex­per­tise in build­ing ser­vices for smart­phones and tablet com­put­ers, an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant area of tech­nol­o­gy that she be­lieves the In­ter­net com­pa­ny had been ne­glect­ing.

Al­though the Ya­hoo ac­qui­si­tion won't close un­til lat­er this spring, D'Aloisio said the Summ­ly will no longer be avail­able. Summ­ly's tech­nol­o­gy will re­turn in oth­er Ya­hoo prod­ucts, he said.D'Aloisio will work for Ya­hoo in its Lon­don of­fice–in part so that he can com­plete his high school ex­ams.Two oth­er Summ­ly work­ers will join Ya­hoo at its Sun­ny­vale, Cal­i­for­nia, head­quar­ters.D'Aloisio is younger than Ya­hoo, which was in­cor­po­rat­ed in March 1995.

AP