| Commercial: | yes |
| Language: | English |
| Owner: | Alphabet Inc. |
| Wavii | |
| Launch Date: | 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.[1] 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.[2]
Wavii's team was primarily former Last.fm, Microsoft, and Amazon engineers.[3]
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.[4]
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.[5]
Following the acquisition Wavii's team relocated from Seattle to the San Francisco Bay area.[6]