Today is a very happy day for us and we want to share some great news with you: Two of the most out-of-the-box thinking organizations on the web have joined forces in order to build a sustainable Internet!

The new Flattr extension will allow users to directly and sustainably fund content they love – simply by browsing the web. “Together we will be able to create an Internet which is fair to all, sustainable and safe.” says Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, co-founder of Flattr.

Since we partnered up last year to create the new Flattr, we noticed that we had similar values and goals for our projects. Subsequently, we decided it makes more sense to remove the barriers that come from working as two separate teams and integrate into one united team. Our goal of making the Internet safe and fair for all is much better served when we’re totally aligned. Thus today, eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus, has acquired 100% of Flattr AB, the company behind Flattr.

Flattr has been creating the world’s first micropayment system that works for virtually all content online. Our model is based on how the distributed Internet works, with lots of information from an endless amount of sources. We no longer read just one newspaper or listen to just one album, we read all and listen to all. While the media industry is struggling to overhaul their analog business models to survive in a digital world, we’ve modeled a solution that takes the status quo into context. We’ve made a new, fair for all, way to pay for content.

Primarily used as an ad blocker, Adblock Plus is also viewed as the open web’s largest content curation platform. It allows users to block content they aren’t interested in, but still helps content creators earn revenue. With the Adblock Plus user base of more than 100 million and the technology of Flattr, we will create a new Flattr. It’s a game changer for how money is distributed to creators directly from their fans, readers and consumers. All in a transparent and fair way.

“At eyeo we’ve always looked for ways to make the web more fair and less annoying. We started with Adblock Plus, which helped pioneer the idea of constructive ad blocking: letting in better, more respectable ads that ad blocking users accept. Flattr makes micropayments automatic and effortless, thus it will be the most user-friendly payment solution on the internet. Together, constructive ad blocking and Flattr complete eyeo’s vision of putting users in control of an internet that is fair and still profitable,” says Till Faida, founder of eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus.

Flattr will be able to provide content creators payment for their work and also act as a quality shield. Creators will earn more money for producing higher quality work that keeps the audience engaged, while clickbait will earn much less. Sometimes you need to totally rethink how a system works – and that’s exactly what we’ve done. We’ve thrown out the old way of thinking and replaced it with a new way of thinking in order to be helpful to all parts of the chain.

In Sweden (where Flattr is based), there’s a saying, “många bäckar små, blir en stor å,” which roughly translates to “many small streams form a big river.” Flattr is a river of hundreds of millions of revenue streams.

The core team of the original Flattr company will continue its operations with all staff members from Malmö, Sweden. Peter Sunde acts as the visionary advisor he is known as and his co-founder Linus Olsson will continue to head the operation and implementation.

To get early access to the new zero-click beta Flattr join the waiting list.