E*Trade has acquired Cake Financial, an online investment club where users could import and track their data from multiple brokerages and share it with other people. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In a note on the firm's Web site, CEO Steven Carpenter says that, as of yesterday, it "will cease operation as an independent service" and that "aspects of the Cake service will be incorporated into the E*Trade website".
The site has now shut down and, rather than being offered the chance to transfer their data to another service, users will have their information "deleted and destroyed". Customers that paid for either Cake Premium or Comparison will be reimbursed.
TechCrunch claims E*trade won a bidding war with The Motley Fool to take control of the startup, which was launched at a September 2007 conference organised by the blog site.