Google has acquired two startup operations -- Katango and Apture Inc. -- that should bolster the company's existing Google+ and Google Chrome offerings.

Katango is an automatic friend sorter that would help adding new features to Google+, the search giant's latest foray into social networking. Katango was founded a bit over a year ago to develop social algorithms that improve people's online social interaction.

We're excited to join the Google+ team and carry on fulfilling that mission. Google+ is seeing tremendous momentum, so it's a perfect time to join and make Circles smarter for millions of people, Katango said in a statement on its Web site.

Google+ has a similar feature to Katango in the form of Circles, but it doesn't help a user automatically sort their friends into Circles. The acquisition of Katango appears to fill this void.

Very excited to confirm that we've just acquired Katango! In the earliest days of Google+, I alluded to the fact that we had big plans for Circles. Are you ready for some magic in your Circles? These folks are magicians! Bradley Horowitz, vice president-product, Google+, wrote in a Google+ post.

Meanwhile, Apture is a service that allows bloggers and other publishers to link and incorporate multimedia into a dynamic layer above their page content. San Francisco-based Apture was founded in 2007 with investment from Clearstone Venture Partners and Angel Investors.

Recently, it launched the browser extension Apture Highlights, enabling users to instantaneously search for content from around the Web without leaving a page. This kind of feature set would bode well for Google Chrome browser.

After enhancing more than a billion pages with our products, we think now is the best time to expand our efforts with another team just down the road that shares our vision of making the web better. :) That's right -- we've been acquired by Google and will be joining the Chrome team to continue driving innovation and creating a better user experience on the web. The modern web is an amazing platform, so stay tuned for even more enhancements to your Chrome browsing experience, a statement on Apture's site reads.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., still in the process of completing the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility announced in August, has spent more than $3 billion during the past two years on snapping up over 100 other companies.

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