Google Inc has acquired Wavii, the Seattle-based startup behind a news
summarization app, for roughly $30 million in cash, a person with
knowledge of the matter said Tuesday.
Google's successful bid came
after Apple Inc had expressed interest in buying Wavii to incorporate
the startup's natural language technology into Siri, Apple's
voice-activated personal assistant feature, said the person, who
declined to be named because the deal has not been publicly announced.
Google and Wavii declined to comment.
Google's
purchase comes several weeks after Yahoo Inc paid a similar amount to
acquire Summly, the news reader and Wavii competitor founded by
18-year-old Nick D'Aloisio in London.
The deals have taken out of
play two small companies that sought to enhance how consumer experience
news - a significant concern for Google and Yahoo, which both maintain
highly trafficked news sites.
In separate interviews last year, Wavii founder Adrian Aoun and D'Aloisio acknowledged the competition between the two startups.
D'Aloisio
touted Summly's superior user interface, which condenses articles into
several easy-to-read paragraphs. Aoun played up his app's technology,
including a proprietary algorithm that boiled down complex news stories
into sentences of just a few words.
Wavii's investors included
Paypal co-founder Max Levchin, former Facebook executive Dave Morin, and
Fritz Lanman, a former dealmaker at Microsoft Corp.
Most of the startup's employees are expected to relocate to Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California.
News of the acquisition was first reported by Techcrunch.
