Weeks after Yahoo acquired news summarization app Summly and integrated its technology into its mobile app, Google has followed its rival with the purchase of natural language processing startup Wavii. News of Google's acquisition first emerged on April 24th but was confirmed today in a message on the company's website, which also announced the service would be shut down immediately.

Wavii CEO Adrian Aoun says that while the company will no longer offer its news summarization app, it will take its natural language research to Google, where it will be used "in ways that may be useful to millions of people around the world." With Google looking to shut down Google Reader on July 1st, today's announcement suggests the company has a strong desire to bring its news reading in-house. It's possible we could see Wavii's technology used to process the millions of articles and blog posts flowing through Google News, delivering more relevant summaries of the content within them.