Google Inc has announced the acquisition of Wavii, a start-up based out of Seattle that created a news summarization app for the price tag of US$30 million in cash. This was confirmed by an individual with knowledge about the transaction who spoke on condition of anonymity,.
Google's acquisition came after Apple's initial interest in purchasing Wavii so that it can synergize the natural language technology of the company to Siri, the voice activated personal assistant feature of Apple.
When sought for comments, both Google and Wavii declined to provide any.
This move is very similar to Yahoo Inc's acquisition of Summly, a news reader established by Nick D' Aloisio of London. The purchase by Yahoo is roughly in the same neighborhood as the Wavii deal.
The two deals have been absorbed into the news consumer exprience competition between the two search engine moguls. Since both Yahoo and Google maintain high traffic news sites, it is but natural that a summary app would be made available to their users.
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