Yap Voicemail was a voicemail transcription application for devices based on Apple iOS and Google's Android platforms, according to CLTBlog, which unearthed the acquisition after learning that the service was being shuttered. Yap Voicemail went silent Oct. 20, according to the company's Website.--Given Yap's clear speech recognition intellectual property, it's tempting to view the deal as a competitive play against Apple and Google.
Google has allowed users to do conduct voice searches on iPhones and Android devices for the last three years, including Voice Actions, which provide Siri-like functionality. Amazon, which did not respond to eWEEK's questions about the acquisition, will likely use Yap's functionality to provide speech recognition as an alternative input mode to typing on its Kindle e-reader devices and future versions of the Kindle Fire. Readers might also speak to make voice annotations in the margins of the Kindle book's pages.
Finally, Google this past summer launched Google Voice Search on the desktop, allowing users to simply speak into the computer's microphones to search for what they want on Google.com. Well, it could have something to do with Amazon’s need for voice recognition technology to compete with Apple’s Siri. Yap had an Android and iOS app called Yap Voicemail, which was still in private beta (and has now been mysteriously discontinued); it transcribed your phone calls for you. With strong voice recognition, Amazon could push the Kindle as a supremely easy device for accessing your media hands-free. Amazon quietly purchased a Charlotte voice-to-text startup called Yap, an SEC filing shows.
The filing does not mention Amazon by name, but Yap merged with a company called "Dion Acquisition Sub" that just so happens to be headquartered at 410 Terry Avenue in Seattle, Washington, an Amazon.com building. Yap's consumer voicemail-to-text service had remained in private beta, but according to Charlotte's CLTBlog, the underlying intellectual property reached far beyond the beta app. Yap was founded by the Jablokov brothers, Igor and Victor, in 2006. "Yap is truly a leader in freeform speech recognition and driving innovation in the mobile user experience," Paul Grim, General Partner at SunBridge Partners, said at the time. The acquisition is particularly interesting given the prominence of Apple's voice efforts and the depth of Google's.
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