Google purchases startup founded by Lebanese-American for $30 million

Google Inc has acquired Wavii, the Seattle-based startup behind a news summarization app, for roughly $30 million in cash.             

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.           

Wavii offers a service that lets people “follow” a subject — such as biotechnology, the Middle East or stamp collecting — in much the same way you would follow a person on Twitter or Facebook. But when the company launched in 2012, Lebanese-American founder Adrian Aoun had a greater version, saying that he planned to expand the technology at the heart of the company’s service and provide a way for machines to better understand the massive amounts of information posted to the internet with each passing minute.                

Google's purchase comes several weeks after Yahoo Inc paid a similar amount to acquire Summly, the news reader and Wavii competitor founded by 17-year-old Nick D'Aloisio in London.             


REUTERS/LBCI