Apple paid between $10 million and $15 million for the book discovery search engine

Jul 26, 2014 17:32 GMT  ·  By
BookLamp was a demo for the "Book Genome Project", a book discovery project that tracks over 32,100 distinct points per book. Basically, this was named the Pandora for Books.
 
Techcrunch has got an anonymous tip saying that BookLamp was acquired by Apple. The startup based in Idaho was in charge of developing big data-style books analytics. From the time Techcrunch ran their story, Apple has confirmed with a simple statement saying "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans".
 
Supposedly the transaction was priced at over $10 million and lower than $15 million. According to Techcrunch, BookLamp's most well-known project was the Book Genome Project. They were helping users find suggestions for books to read based on natural language analysis of other titles. 
 
Surely, this suggests that Apple is trying to revamp their iBookstore with better recommendations, categorization and search features. The former website of BookLamp now shows a message for their users: "We would like to thank you for the support we've received over the years in our efforts to explore the exciting world of the written word through digital analysis. As of today, though, the BookLamp.org site - which has served as a technology demo for the Book Genome Project will no longer be available as our company evolves its mission. Thank you again for your active involvement and participation over the past several years. It is our users, publishers, and our mutual love of books that inspire us day in and day out. Thank you for being part of the journey to date".
 
Techcrunch was not able to confirm this with BookLamp staff, but they have tracked the team members that were changing Facebook location of their postings from Idaho, USA to Cupertino, California, USA.
 
BookLamp was one of the first startups to be included in the "Water Cooler" incubator - a co-working facility. BookLamp was also the creators of "The Game of Books" project on Kickstarter. They have got funded back in December of 2012.The project was basically rewarding readers for each book there were done with. 
 
The Game of Books combined the physical world of books and the digital and imaginary. It was a website that was called at the time "Foursquare for books". Kickstarter backers paid as low as $10 for an early Beta access and $13 to play the game.