Google has acquired Apture, a startup that brings instantaneous search to content on the web, we’ve confirmed with both companies. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Launched in 2008, Apture has raised $4.6 million from Beau Vrolyk, Paul Maritz, Steve Taylor, Clearstone Venture Partners

Co-founded by Tristan Harris and Can Sar, Apture developes ‘Apture Highlights,’ a browser extension that aims to plug the “search leak” that the company says is taking place with content on the web. Apture highlights a search leak as when a users is reading content, wants more information about a keyword or phrase and then opens another browser tab to search for the information on Google, Bing or Yahoo. The downside for the content publisher is that the user disengages with the actual content by leaving the page.

Apture Highlights allows you to highlight any word or phrase on a page and instantly bring up search results in a window. The startup brings results from 60-plus sources including YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google and more for extra context around content. The browser add-on is available for Chrome, Firefox and Apple’s Safari browsers. In fact, more than a billion pages a month are enhanced with Apture, says Harris.

Apture’s business model also offered publishers a white-label version of Apture Highlights, which is being used by Scribd, The Financial Times, Reuters, Economist.com, ScientificAmerican, BleacherReport.com, and Times of India. Publisher simply insert a line of Javascript code, and readers can then access an HTML-based overlay that acts like a minitiature browser that enables readers to find and explore related multimedia content without leaving the original page.

The virtue of using the technology for publishers is that content sites are increasing their search volume and site page views by driving traffic to related articles for every search. Consumers actually stay on a publisher page with Apture two to three times longer than without the plug-in.

The company also recently launched HotSpots, which allows Apture to populate hyperlinks on the fly on any page on the web. Publishers have to add one line of code and hyperlinks will appear for readers without publishers having to link. The links point to Apture overlays which give a range of data to a reader without them having to leave the page: Wikipedia, CrunchBase, search results, maps, etc.

In an interview today, Harris explained that when he started the company back in 2007, he felt that there was an incredible opportunity within the medium of the web to find contextual information to help you understand what you are looking at on a webpage. Harris wanted Apture to become part of the ‘fabric of the web’.

But in the past few years, Harris says that he realizes that the browseritself is part of the medium that will shape how information is really accessible. “You can’t talk about making information accessible without talking about the web browser,” he explains.

With that thought in mind, when Google approached Harris and the company over the past few months with an acquisition offer, the integration made sense. Combined with google’s own mission of making information accesible, “the Chrome platform has 200 active million users a month and that’s a huge scale that Apture’s technology could reach,” says Harris.

Google says of the acquisition, “We were impressed by the Apture team’s approach to enhancing the web browser experience, and we think their expertise will complement the Chrome team’s efforts in this area.”

The Apture team, which is composed of ten employees, will be joining the Google Chrome team improve user experience. Google says that Apture’s plug-ins and white-label technology will be shut down within next month or so.

Harris says, “We’re bringing all things we’ve been doing and a lot more to the Chrome team. With the growth of Chrome as a browser, it’s clear why this acquisition make so much sense, and who else would you want to partner with to the change-up fabric of the internet? We’re going to make browsing much more than it’s ever been and it’s really exciting.”

For Google, this is also a bit of a talent acquisition as well. Harris previously worked in the user interface engineering world of Apple, where he has two pending patents. He helped build the first ad server for Wikia, was also a Mayfield Fellow with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and dropped out of the Stanford Computer Science Masters program to start Apture. Sar is also on a leave of absence from the Stanford Computer Science PhD program and has published several academic papers in Operating Systems and Security, and is the author of several pending patents.

All around, the acquisition is a win for Google. It was only a matter of time before a web giant like Google or Facebook snapped up the startup, and it doesn’t hurt to add a number of talented developers and engineers as well.

That’s what HotSpots, a new feature from Apture aims to do. Most of you will know Apture as the contextual add-on service that both publishers (through simple JavaScript) and web surfers (through browser extensions) use to augment their web experience with information. What you may not know is that thanks to this service, Apture has access to some really good data. A lot of it. And the key part of that data shows exactly what users highlight when they browse webpages.

In other words, it shows where those users wish there were hyperlinks, taking them to a site to learn more.

With HotSpots, Apture can now populate those hyperlinks on the fly on any page on the web. All publishers have to do is add one line of code and they’re set. Hyperlinks will now magically appear for your readers without you having to link a thing. These links, naturally, will point to Apture overlays which give a range of data to a reader without them having to leave the page: Wikipedia, CrunchBase, search results, maps, etc.

The same thing will occur for anyone who has the Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or IE extensions installed (this will roll out over time).

Apture co-founder Tristan Harris explains that thanks to the 900 million or so collective pageviews they’re seeing across the sites and people using Apture now, they’re able to do something like this. And it points to the core idea behind Apture. “The plan all along wasn’t just a widget for publishers. The end game was always connecting all of this information together,” Harris says.

He notes that if you think of the web as a brain, and each page as a neuron, each link is then like a synapse that connects the pages together and makes everything work. And each click or highlight or search makes these connections stronger. And in turn, the brain gets smarter. With HotSpots, he hopes to make the web smarter by automating part of this process. The feature is quite literally the missing link(s).

So is Apture just going to turn the web into one continuous stream of hyperlinks? No. They’re smart about it. They’re watching what’s hot to determine what should actually be a link and what shouldn’t be. As trends change, links will pop in and out of existence.

Hundreds of publishers like ScientificAmerican.com will be going live with HotSpots today. Others can sign up for the beta on Apture’s site.

Apture is adding former About.com CEO Peter Horan to its board of directors. Horan was formerly the CEO of About.com, which was acquired by the New York Times for $410 million in 2005. Most recently, Horan was the CEO of IAC Media & Advertising.

Apture’s business model offers publishers a white-label version of Apture Highlights, which is being used by Scribd, The Financial Times and Reuters. CEO Tristan Harris is also announcing a number of new publishers are adopting Apture, including Economist.com, ScientificAmerican, BleacherReport.com, and Times of India. While Harris cannot comment on the amount of searches being made via Apture’s plug-in, he says that consumers stay on a publisher page with Apture two to three times longer than without the plug-in.

The startup, which has raised $4.1 million in funding, has also started to place ads in the browsing experience. Publishers pay a monthly licensing fee to have a branded, ad-free experience, but Apture now includes ads within searches for the consumer facing and free products.

We wrote about Apture Highlights, a new plug-in that brings instantaneous search to content on the web, a few months ago. Today, Apture has scored a pretty significant deal with document-sharing site Scribd to allow users to use Apture Highlights on the tens of millions of public documents on the content platform.

As we wrote in August, ‘Apture Highlights’ plugs the “search leak” that is taking place with content on the web. The feature allows you to highlight any word or phrase on a page and instantly bring up search results in a window. The startup brings results from 60-plus sources including YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google and more for extra context around content.

Now, when users are reading documents, books, or other works on Scribd, they will be able to highlight any word, and Apture will open a small browser within the page to search for the additional information on Google, Bing or Yahoo.

Scribd representative Michelle Laird says that this integration is made possible party because of the company’s move to convert the platform to HTML5, which provides a more engaging experience for users (as of July, user engagement had tripled on Scribd.)

According to Laird, 50 percent of documents will be integrated with Apture today, with the remaining integrations rolled out over the next few days. For Apture, which has raised $4.1 million in funding, the deal with Scribd is a big win. This will be largest implementation of Apture to date, says the startup’s CEO Tristan Harris. Other Apture partners include The Financial Times and Reuters.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/15725310?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0

Apture Highlights on Scribd from Tristan Harris on Vimeo.

Called ‘Apture Highlights,’ the browser extension aims to plug the “search leak” that the company says is taking place with content on the web. Apture highlights a search leak as when a users is reading content, wants more information about a keyword or phrase and then opens another browser tab to search for the information on Google, Bing or Yahoo. The downside for the content publisher is that the user disengages with the actual content by leaving the page.

Apture Highlights allows you to highlight any word or phrase on a page and instantly bring up search results in a window. The startup brings results from 60-plus sources including YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google and more for extra context around content. The browser add-on is currently available for Chrome, Firefox and Apple’s Safari browsers.

Apture has been offering the technology for publishers such as the Financial Times and Reuters for some time now. But this is new add-on represents the startup’s first offerings for consumers. And publishers say that Apture’s plug-in increases engagement, with interaction with their site increasing by two to three times when activated. Apture says that publishers are also increasing their search volume and site page views by driving traffic to related articles for every search.

I’ve installed the add-on and it’s actually very useful for looking up keywords without needing to leave the page or article. And adding context to content through search is something that even large tech companies like Yahoo are trying to get into. Yahoo just released a feature called Infinite Browse, which will suggest searches for specific terms around news content. Similar to Apture, the idea behind the new feature is to allow readers to access related content they would search for without having to go to a separate search portal and type in the query.

Launched in 2008, Apture has raised $4.1 million in funding.

Online publishers can use Apture by simply inserting a line of Javascript code after creating an account, which allows them to link words and phrases to a HTML-based overlay that acts like a minitiature browser that enables readers to find and explore related multimedia content without leaving the original page. Note that this only works when you’re actually on the equipped page, not in the RSS feed, and that the functionality is not supported by WordPress.com.

Contextual content is fetched from sources like Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, Amazon, etc. but also Twitter and FriendFeed (more on that below). They’ve also added CrunchBase to the mix, which we wrote about here.

You can see Apture in action by clicking through to this Washington Post article. Just hover over the names of U.S. Senators with a little icon next to them, and the widget should pop out automatically. I only wish it wouldn’t scroll the article up or down when it opens a pop-up, but I find it surprisingly non-intrusive besides that.

New is that Apture now also supports adding rich media links to content that hasn’t yet been published (something that wasn’t possible before and probably slowed down its adoption a bit) thanks to the addition of plugins for Blogger, TypePad, WordPress and MovableType.

They’ve also just released a neat integration with Twitter, so that you can easily link @username or #hashtags to Twitter streams in blog post or news articles, which is an excellent feature if you ask me. Read more about it here and hover over the account of Sen. John McCain in the blog post to see how it works.

Apture is free of charge for bloggers and online publishers with less than five million page views per month. More pageviews means you have to pay to use the service, but that’s not the core of Apture’s business model, which is centered around charging publishers for premium features, integration of custom content sources, customizations, and priority support. On top of that, Apture runs its own advertising sales with display opportunities across its entire publisher network, and splits that revenue with those publishers.

Apture has already been tested by BBC, Reuters and the Washington Post, and The New York Times is also said to be experimenting with the service.

Six weeks ago we launched an API for our technology database, CrunchBase. The idea was to give away lots of clean, structured data about the companies we cover, data that could be used to build new services and improve upon existing ones.

Since then we’ve seen a number of impressive things built on top of the API. And the traffic has started to add up: between July 15th and August 15th we fulfilled nearly 800,000 API requests, compared to ~1.3m page views for the website itself.

We now have over 15 projects hooked up to CrunchBase with many others on the way. Developers interested in using CrunchBase data for their own projects should check out the API documentation.

Today we wanted to highlight a few of the more sophisticated product integrations to date.

Apture

Apture is a startup trying to bring “depth to the web” with contextual popups that require no browser plugin. The product’s blog integration provides a very visual and intuitive way of navigating CrunchBase entries. Here are some examples (click on the little book icons to the left of the links): YouTube, FriendFeed and Evan Williams. Also, check out this video they compiled:

Zemanta

Zemanta, a blogging enhancement tool that launched back in March, recently integrated CrunchBase so that publishers can easily slurp in extra information like company logos into their posts.

Zemanta’s product integrates closely into blogging platforms such as WordPress, and it helps to semantically link up parts of your post with sites from around the web (CrunchBase now included). These guys have been on our case (and rightly so) to release an API for a couple of months now, so it’s great to see their implementation go live. They even offer their own API which takes plain text as input (say, a blog post), and spits out correctly disambiguated CrunchBase entities.

You can check out a demo of their product here.

Flash CrunchBase

Nicolás Parziale has created a very cool flash app inspired by They Rule that visualizes the graph of connections throughout CrunchBase. You can start with a company (such as Digg, shown below) and then flesh out different parts of the graph with your mouse. You can even input any two companies, causing the app to crawl the web and visually display all of the connections between the two.

I’m generally not pleased when a user interface does something I didn’t intend it to do. Such as when I click on a link but instead of taking me to a new page, it pops up an overlay with advertising or related content (see this Yahoo News article or any website “enhanced” with Vibrant Media to see what I mean).

So I really should resist the idea behind Apture, a startup founded by three Stanford computer science students that aims to improve contextual popups rather than ban them. But its technology and user interface is actually quite good, even if it does require users to change their expectations a bit.

Publishers can use Apture to enhance their writing by adding links to popups (or HTML-based “overlays”) that display relevant media from sources such as Wikipedia, IMDB, Scribd, Google Maps, Hulu, ESPN, YouTube, Imeem, and Flickr.

Installing Apture is easy: just drop a snippet of JavaScript code onto your site and begin manually choosing the sections of your writing that you want to turn into popup triggers. Related media content can also be added between paragraphs as embeds. The publisher interface, like the end-user experience, overlays the page’s content, making setup a matter of point-and-clicking.

Let’s say I’m talking about Redmond, Washington or Family Guy or David Bowie. See those links? If you click on them, popups will appear that shed light on what they reference. And the popups will lead you off to other, related popups that can be used to learn even more.

Apture’s publisher tool has been available to 2,500 blogs (including a couple blogs run by the Washington Post) since April. Over the past couple months, the company has worked on improving the user interface and adding support for additional sources. The tool is now being made available to everyone.

As a publisher, there are a few concerns that come to mind when considering a tool like Apture. As mentioned before, it requires users to change their expectations. It also requires publishers to change their own habits (especially if they have to add these links after their content is live). And it might even cut down on page views when used to showcase internal media in lieu of hard links. Perhaps a way to get around two of these issues would be to make the link’s icon trigger an overlay but leave the link itself as a normal one.

Apture is based in San Mateo, California and has raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding since its founding in February 2007.