America Online Inc. on Wednesday announced that it has acquired a multimedia search engine company and is using the technology to power a new audio and video search feature.
AOL said it has purchased Singingfish Inc., a Seattle-based that has created an index of 9 million streaming media files and in August added search for Flash content to its service.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, and officials at Singingfish and AOL could not be immediately reached for further comment.
The acquisition will allow AOL, a Dulles, Va.-based subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., to expand its AOL Search service beyond text-based searching to include audio and video search, a new feature also launched on Wednesday.
Users of AOL Search now will be able to find audio and video content across the Web as well as exclusive and on-demand content from its AOL and AOL for Broadband services, the company said.
Singingfish licenses its multimedia search for use in both Windows Media Player and Real Networks RealOne Player. The search engine also is available at Singingfish.com and at Comcast Corp.s broadband portal Comcast.net.