Microsoft buys Wand to boost its chat-centric"conversations as a platform" vision

Satya Nadella wasn't kidding when he said earlier this year that he believed in using chat as a platform for computing. Microsoft just bought Wand, a chat app for iOS, to further that vision. The Wand team will be joining Bing's engineering and platform group, Corporate Vice President David Ku wrote in a post announcing the deal Thursday. The company's team members will be working primarily on Microsoft's push to enable the creation of intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants. It's a natural fit for Wand, which had been working since 2013 on apps that let users chat with one another and add outside information from sources like Yelp.