Google acquires start-up web site link-sharing platform Kifi

Google announced this week that its parent company Alphabet has acquired Mountain View, California-based Kifi, a start up web site link-sharing platform.

According to commentators, Kifi could help the tech giant strengthen its Google Spaces social media platform. Google Spaces aimed to be the app individuals would use to share content in groups on any topic. Group-sharing app Kifi comes with Google Search, YouTube and Chrome built into it.

The details of the acquisition had not been released, but according to Kifi part of its team would immediately start working on Google Spaces. That might fit in with what Kifi, was all about adding collaboration efforts to somewhat ease the process of organising and using information for a variety of group projects and interests. Kifi had also developed tools for contextualising stored information, including a deep search engine for Twitter content and links.

However according to Rand Fishkin, founder of Seattle-based SEO consulting company Moz, it was important to be cautious in ascribing a motive to any of Google's small acquisitions like this one, www.newsfactor.com reported.

"It could be a pure 'acquihire,' a use of Kifi's technology for a function entirely separate from its original use, or even an experiment that will never see a public launch," he said. "I wouldn't make any assumptions that Google's going deeper in the content production or distribution space based solely on this move."

Meanwhile, according to Google engineering director Eddie Kessler the app's employees would become part of the Google Spaces team.

In a post on medium.com about the acqui-hire, Kifi noted, ''The mission at Kifi has always been to connect people with knowledge. We created a service that seamlessly enables organizing, sharing, discussing, and finding the content you and your team values, which has resulted in more flexible and intuitive collaboration across the internet. We also spent significant time creating a service that overlays context on your browsing and sharing experiences to increase usefulness and understanding.''