Google has bought Apture, the start-up that makes a browser plug-in that adds additional contextual information to Web pages for the Internet’s most prominent publishers.
The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
A Google spokesperson said the search giant was interested not only in Apture’s product, but the team and the partnerships it had built.
Apture CEO Tristan Harris has spent some of the last four years wearing out the carpets in the offices of major online publishers.
In an interview today, Harris said that the Apture staffers will join the Chrome team at Google.
“We started the company to help people have more frictionless access to information,” he said. “And those features will take on new forms in the Chrome browser.”
Apture has raised $4.1 million in venture funding so far, including a $3.5 million round from Clearstone Ventures.