Delicious, the once great social bookmarking site, has a new owner… again

Bookmarking service Delicious has been sold by Avos Systems to Science Inc. for an undisclosed amount, the companies announced today.

Delicious is sort of like an extremely bright kid who gets passed on to a new set of foster parents every couple of years, thus extinguishing any potential it might have had to become a long-term success.

The service was first sold in 2005 to web giant Yahoo, who nearly shut it down after years of letting it collect dust. In 2011, YouTube cofounders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen’s Avos systems purchased the site from Yahoo and attempted to resurrect its popularity with sweeping changes that alienated long-time users. And now it’s Science Inc.’s turn.

Delicious is the first big acquisition to be featured in Science Inc.’s new portfolio of data-driven mobile content. And while we don’t know how much Science spent on the service, the acquisition deal didn’t include bringing on any of Delicious’ employees. That essentially means it has the service’s technology and probably more important, the branding.

“They’ve got an immense amount of data and an incredible understanding of what is trending on the web,” Science CEO Mike Jones told the New York Times in reference to the current iteration of Delicious. “At the end of the day, we think they serve this really unique community as a daily utility.”

Science said in the immediate future the firm will focus on keeping what’s left of Delicious’ user base happy without interruption while it continues to improve the bookmarking service.