 | |
| Available in | English |
|---|---|
| Owner | Alphabet Inc. |
| Commercial | yes |
| Launched | Late 2008 |
| Current status | Active (Integrated in Google) |
Wavii was a Seattle startup founded by Adrian Aoun in 2008, and was subsequently acquired by Google, Inc. in April 2013. Wavii developed an iPhone app that allowed users to follow topics (e.g., a company, celebrity, politician, athlete, city, etc.) and receive short updates about them in their feed. This app was based on data produced by Wavii's proprietary technology, which used natural-language-processing and machine-learning approaches to convert content on the web (e.g., news articles and blogs) into structured summaries of the stories they contained.
Wavii's team was primarily former Last.fm, Microsoft, and Amazon engineers.
Google acquisition
On April 30, 2013 it was announced that Google, Inc. had acquired Wavii for an amount that was officially undisclosed, but which industry insiders claimed was over $30 million USD. The acquisition was viewed as a way for Google to expand their ability to understand the web for search and to summarize content.
Google discontinued the Wavii iPhone app and website, but the company reported that it is continuing to run Wavii's technology and produce feed content for applications within Google.
Following the acquisition Wavii's team relocated from Seattle to the San Francisco Bay area.
References
- Ingrid Lunden (2013-04-26). "Wavii Confirms Google Buy, Shuts Down Its Service To Make Natural Language Products For The Search Giant". TechCrunch.
- Santos, Alexis (2013-04-24). "Google reportedly acquires natural language processing startup Wavii". Engadget.com. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
- "Join". LinkedIn. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
- Efrati, Amir (2013-04-23). "Google Acquires Wavii to Beef Up Web-Search 'Knowledge Graph' - Digits - WSJ". Blogs.wsj.com. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
- "Wavii". Wavii. Archived from the original on 2013-08-12. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
- "Wavii officially acquired by Google, app shuts down". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
Further reading
- Wingfield, Nick (April 13, 2012). "Wavii: A Facebook for Topics". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 February 2014.
- Wavii Vows to Understand Entire Internet | Wired.com
- It's Official: Google Has Acquired News Stream Startup Wavii - Business Insider
- With An Improved Design, Navigation & Social Features, Wavii’s Rebuilt iPhone App Is Like A Facebook News Feed For Actual News | TechCrunch
- Wavii (for iPhone) (beta) Review & Rating | PCMag.com
External links
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- 2008 establishments in Washington (state)
- Defunct companies based in Seattle
- Google acquisitions
- Discontinued Google acquisitions
- Software companies based in Seattle
- Discontinued iOS software
- Software companies established in 2008
- 2013 disestablishments in Washington (state)
- Software companies disestablished in 2013
- Google stubs