Amazon buys speech recognition startup to rival Siri
11/09, 11:35am
Amazon snaps up Yap for Kindle voice commands
Amazon may be quietly if unintentionally gunning after Apple's Siri with future Kindles, a newly discovered SEC filing (PDF) has revealed. Using a shell company known as Dion Acquisition Sub to keep the deal out of its usual SEC filings, Amazon has bought Yap, which had a voicemail-to-text service but had also focused heavily on natural-language speech recognition and an emphasis on mobile technology. Although terms of the deal were kept secret, the takeover left little question as to Amazon's involvement, since Dion's headquarters was at 410 Terry Avenue in Seattle, owned solely by Amazon.