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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Google and Wavii declined to comment.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In separate interviews last year, Wavii founder Adrian Aoun and D’Aloisio acknowledged the competition between the two startups.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Wavii’s investors included Paypal co-founder Max Levchin, former Facebook executive Dave Morin, and Fritz Lanman, a former dealmaker at Microsoft Corp.<\/p>\n
Most of the startup’s employees are expected to relocate to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.<\/p>\n
News of the acquisition was first reported by Techcrunch.<\/p>\n
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