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Apple Reportedly Bought Ottocat for Explore Tab in App Store

Apple Reportedly Bought Ottocat for Explore Tab in App Store

By Hitesh Arora | Updated: 7 April 2015 18:26 IST

The brain behind Apple's 'Explore' feature on the App Store is reportedly a startup named Ottocat, which is said to have been acquired by the Cupertino giant in 2013.

According to TechCrunch report on Tuesday, Apple acquired Ottocat in late-2013. While there has been no announcement on the acquisition till date by either of the two companies, TechCrunch discovered a patent granted to Apple which was originally filed by Ottocat's Co-Founder, Edwin Cooper as an employee of Apple. The patent titled "System and Method for Divisive Textual Clustering by Label Selection Using Variant-Weighted TFIDF" pertains to the kind of technology used both by Ottocat and the App Store's Explore feature.

The startup Ottocat reportedly developed a system to organise and surface apps on the App Store after its acquisition, and then in mid-2014 Apple introduced the Explore tab. The overall indexing of apps also takes extra details such as the average star ratings, popularity of the app, and last updated in account.

(Also see: Apple's Music Streaming Plans Being Probed by EU Regulators: Report)

Ottocat was co-founded by Edwin Cooper and Michelle Cooper in 2012. The startup developed a working prototype of its technology in 2013, with a public beta launching in May 2013. In October 2013, Ottocat's website went down with the short message written, "Ottocat is no longer available."

At present Ottocat's Web URL still exist but offers a blank page and nothing else.

(Also see: Apple to Launch iMac With Retina 8K Display Later This Year, Tips LG)

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