

It's not a shocking move when Rakuten is one of the largest online retailers on the planet and wants to fend off both chat rivals like Facebook and shopping behemoths like Amazon. You don't have to jump to a separate app or the web just to share those great shoes you found. The deal gives it full control over a keyboard that lets you browse store catalogs and either share them with your friends or commit to a purchase. A few months after including an Instant Shopping feature in Viber, parent company Rakuten Viber has snapped up the feature's architect, Chatter Commerce. If you owned Viber and saw Facebook make a big deal of in-chat shopping, what would you do? Bake shopping into the very heart of your messaging app, apparently.
