Google acquires news summarisation startup Wavii
Google mirrors Yahoo's Summly deal by acquiring Seattle-based news summarisation start-up for $30 million.
Search engine giant Google has acquired Wavii, a Seattle based start-up which offers customized news feeds to users, for approximately $30 million.
Wavii was launched last year offering customized news feed to users, summarizing news stories, tweets and blogs. Google acquisition comes several weeks after Yahoo Inc. bought Summly, the news reader/summarisation app for a similar amount. According to sources, it is believed that Google got tangled in a bidding feud with Apple in its attempt to purchase Wavii.
Wavii was setup by former Microsoft employee Andrew Aoun and became popular with its summarizing service, which takes up to 1,000 articles a minute and summarizes them into manageable news feed based on user preferences. Wavii would help Google to integrate its technology with Google News, Google Now and various other applications. It could also be a new and improved replacement for the recently-axed Google Reader.
Experts believe that this move would facilitate improved search results for news stories.
Source: PCPro