Google has bought news summarisation service Wavii for an estimated $30m (£18m).
Wavii, which was launched last year, has shut down its service so the technology can be incorporated into Google products.
The Seattle-based company specialises in “natural language processing”, which programmes computers to understand how humans communicate.
Wavii offered a personalised news feed to users, summarising web content related to their interests.
Neither Google nor Wavii have revealed the price of the deal, but reports suggest it was about $30m.
Apple had reportedly also been keen to buy the start-up to incorporate the technology into Siri, the voice recognition and personal assistant function of its devices.
The deal follows a similar move by Yahoo in March, when it bought Summly, the news summarisation app founded by 18-year-old Nick D'Aloisio in London.
Yahoo recently launched an iPhone app which included Summly technology.
Wavii chief executive Adrian Aoun said in a statement: “You probably know us best for our app that takes the deluge of information streaming across the web and condenses it into fast, fun updates.
“While we won't continue to offer this particular service, we'll be using our natural language research at Google in ways that may be useful to millions of people around the world.
“To all of our loyal Wavii users, we owe you a big thanks for all of your feedback and involvement throughout this journey. We look forward to taking our technology to the next level and delighting you with what we come up with next!”
Wavii's investors included PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, former Facebook executive Dave Morin, and Fritz Lanman, a former dealmaker at Microsoft Corp.
Most of the start-up's 25 employees are expected to relocate to Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California.
The natural-language technology could be useful for Google's Knowledge Graph, an 11-month-old feature that summarises information in boxes that appear alongside some of Google's search results.
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