Superpod

Superpod is the American service of questions and answers, similar Russian Answers of Mail.ru. The company is based in Palo Alto (California).

History

2018: Google purchased Superpod

At the beginning of 2019 it became known of sale of Superpod of Google corporation. At first announced the Axios edition with reference to an informed source the transaction, and Google confirmed information.

According to Axios, the Internet giant paid "less than $60 million" for Superpod purchase. As notes SiliconANGLE even if the actual cost of the transaction was below the specified amount, it all the same is impressive for a startup whose application did not draw great attention of the public from the moment of the start in 2018.

Google purchased service of questions and answers

In September of the 2018th the Superpod service was closed. Most likely, it resulted from sale to the company. Google not always tells about the acquisitions, and the transaction with Superpod could be one of such.

Cofounders of Superpod Sophia Yang and William Li before creation of the company worked in Google. For example, Sophia Yang was included into research division of Google X.

It is sad to us to announce that we will close Superpod within transition to larger project today. So far we cannot share any details, but we go further to the same northern star and are very glad to the future — Sofia Young and William Li said.

Google does not say in what products it is going to use developments of Superpod. The most obvious area where Google can apply functions of questions and replies of Superpod, the market of voice assistants is. Amazon, the largest competitor of the company, started the program for use of answers in Alexa earlier. Perhaps, Google will start the similar program to try to expand a circle of questions which Google Assistant can solve.^[1]

Notes