It seems that more and more tech companies are jumping into
the acqui-hire bandwagon to further improve their products and services. The
latest tech heavy weight to announce another acqui-hire is no other than Google
with its acquisition of Wavii for a reported $30 million.
Apple also had an interest with Wavii and was Google’s main
competitor for the Seattle-based startup. Both companies took interest in Wavii’s
algorithm that parses a personalized news feed and summarizes them in similar fashion
as Yahoo’s recent acquisition – Summly.
Wavii’s 25-person team, including its founder Adrian Aoun,
will soon move from Seattle to join Google’s Knowledge Graph division in
Mountain View, California. At the time of acquisition, Wavii had raised over $2 million
in seed funding from several investors including Max Levchin, Crunchfund, SV
Angel, Felicis Ventures, Mitch Kapor and Dave Morin to name a few.
As to what Google plans to do with Wavii technology, it’s
possible that the Search giant will go the same way as Yahoo did with the
latest version of its app on iOS. However, Google has a more diverse portfolio
than Yahoo so it may employ Wavii’s expertise in places other than search, say
its upcoming Glass HUD.
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comment below.
