Clipboard, the Web page clipping service run by former Microsoft researcher Gary Flake, has gobbled up the assets of rivals Clipmarks and Amplify which announced today that they are shutting down their respective services. Clipboard says it marks more of a partnership than an outright acquisition. Customers of Clipmarks and Amplify are being asked to join Clipboard as part of the transition, a move that will help grow its community of users.

Flake tells GeekWire that no employees are coming over as part of the deal, and no technology assets are being purchased. In combination, the two services had more than one million users (including more than 100,000 active users in the past year). As part of the arrangement, Flake is sending emails to Clipmarks and Amplify users asking them to join Clipboard.

Gary Flake

Flake noted that they are not able to guarantee that all clips from the two services would be preserved.

“One interesting issue with the migration is on the structure of the older Clips.  They contain text, images, video, and style information, and we are presently working out how we can preserve everything,” he said. “The three systems have some differences that make the conversion non-trivial, so we are assessing the demand first to see if it makes sense.”

Backers of Clipboard, which raised $1.4 million last year, include Silicon Valley super angel Ron Conway; Andreesen Horowitz; Index Ventures; Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund; Draper Fisher Jurvetson; First Round Capital; Amazon.com board member Blake Krikorian; former Overture CEO Ted Meisel; Acequia Capital; Vast Ventures; Betaworks; CODE Advisers; and Seattle’s Founder’s Co-op.

Clipboard just this month unveiled a new Web design, one that could match it up against fast-growing Pinterest.

“Your clips are now presented in a much cleaner and more readable way. Descriptive clip actions are now at the top making them more discoverable,” the company wrote in describing the new service. “We’ve added an action counter onto all clips in the tile view, that will keep count of how many people have interacted with the clip. We’ve also added annotations at the bottom of the thumbnails so you can get a preview of what people have written.”

Previously on GeekWireEx-Microsoft researcher unveils Clipboard to save pieces of Web pages

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.