Yahoo Returns Koprol to Its Founders, Koprol 2.0 May Yet Survive

Yahoo announced today via a press release that it is handing back all intellectual properties relating to Koprol to its founders, Fajar Budiprasetyo, Satya Witoelar, and Daniel Armanto, all of whom have left Yahoo earlier this month following the announcement of the service's shutdown in late June. This means ownership of the name, domain, and trademarks of Koprol returns to the founders.

In a statement, Koprol co-founder Satya Witoelar said, "Yahoo! worked closely with us to arrive at an amicable outcome and we are very pleased with this decision"

Koprol was acquired in 2010 to much celebration by the Indonesian startup community and it was hailed as an example of Indonesian engineering efforts. Unfortunately despite the push to accumulate more users and the introduction of all the new features in Koprol following the acquisition, the service never gained serious traction beyond Indonesia.

In April, DailySocial was treated to a preview of what Koprol 2.0 was going to be. Witoelar said then that they planned to refocus Koprol back to its roots and take a different approach to serve the needs of its users more accurately. Unfortunately the layoff announcement hit Koprol just a day later and as a result the plan was immediately scrapped.

Koprol members wondered whether it's possible to save the service and a campaign was launched on Twitter to save Koprol using the hashtag #savekoprol. Following today's announcement, the wishes of these hardcore fans of Koprol may just come true.

As Koprol's intellectual properties have been returned, we may yet see a reincarnation of Koprol in the near future. Currently the remaining team behind Koprol have banded together under a new company called IceHouse. IceHouse is still in stealth mode and its formal office is still under construction. Whether iceHouse will relaunch Koprol and implement the changes that were planned for version 2, we expect to find out soon enough.