We recently reported on Wavii’s possible acquisition by Google earlier this week, and it looks like the cat is officially out of the bag as the company has announced that it has indeed been acquired by Google.
The news comes from Wavii’s CEO Adrian Aoun, who published a statement on its homepage: (more…)
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There was an odd level of uncertainty surrounding Google’s reported buyout of Wavii: where Google usually mentions acquisitions in short order, mum’s been the word for much of the past week. Thankfully, we won’t be left hanging over the weekend — Wavii has stepped forward to confirm the deal is happening. Neither side has discussed the terms involved, but Wavii chief Adrian Aoun made it clear the acquisition is for the technology first and foremost. Wavii’s info summarization service will be shutting down, while the company’s expertise in natural language processing should find its way into future Google projects. It’s sad to see another independent service absorbed by a much larger company, but we’re at least likely to see the fruits of Wavii’s labor through some very public channels.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Wavii
Yesterday, we read on how Yahoo has already integrated Summly into their Yahoo iPhone app after picking it up from a teen sometime late last month for a cool $30 million. Just what is Summly? Well, to sum it up (pun not intended), Summly is a mobile news app which was specially developed to be a mobile news app. Google does not seem to want to fall behind the acquisition race, and have also forked out a similar amount of money to the tune of $30 million to pick up Seattle-based Wavii, the company behind a news summarization app, too.
This successful bid from the Internet search giant arrived after Apple did show some interest in picking up Wavii last time to incorporate their natural language technology into Siri, which so happens to be Apple’s voice-activated personal assistant feature. The deal has yet to be announced publicly, but it is more or less a done deal, although both Google and Wavii have declined to comment. It would be interesting to see how Wavii’s purchase would enhance the user experience for Google fans.
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Word that Google has snapped up natural language processing startup Wavii first came from TechCrunch, and now the Wall Street Journal is chiming in with its own sources claiming the deal has in fact been struck, and that an announcement is imminent. In its current form, Wavii parses a personalized news feed and distills text into a summary for the top stories, similar to Yahoo’s recently-purchased Summly. TechCrunch reports that Apple and Google were locked in a bidding war for the outfit, but the web titan ultimately won with a bid in the neighborhood of $30 million. According to the WSJ, the fledgling firm’s talent will join Page and Co.’s web search team, which means the language detection technology may bolster its Knowledge Graph, giving users better results (and direct answers) for their queries. As language recognition permeates Page and Co.’s projects, Google Now and Google Glass could potentially benefit from the acquisition as well. Mountain View has yet to acknowledge the reported purchase, but if the tea leaves are being read correctly, expect that to happen soon.
Filed under: Google
Source: TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal
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