Facebook buys semantic search firm Chai Labs for more than $10M

August 15, 2010 | Dean Takahashi
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Facebook has purchased search firm Chai Labs for more than $10 million, according to All Things Digital.

It isn’t exactly clear why Facebook is buying Chai Labs. The company specializes in making platforms that allow for “structured content extraction” and semantic search. In other words, it makes search better. Customers include NBC Local, Associated Content, and the Travel Ad Network.

Chai Labs is based in Mountain View, Calif., and was founded by former Google AdSense executive Gokul Rajaram. It has raised more than $2.4 million. Advisors include Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, and Joe Kraus.

Facebook and Chai declined to comment to All Things Digital.

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About the Author,

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • http://twitter.com/brendan_o Brendan O'Neil

    Facebook's value is in keeping viewers on the site for as long as possible, integrating company profiles and working with the likes of Yelp or Pandora for content discovery. They want Facebook to be the home for internet users much like the early days of AOL. This is direct competition to Google who cashes in on eyeballs seeing as it is an advertising company. This purchase would both improve Facebook's search feature and can be seen as a defensive move towards Google.

  • http://outsourcing-services.net/ Outsourcing Philippines

    Great information. We will just hope that it's for the better.

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