A search algorithm called "Orion" is said to deliver more targeted results. Google has confirmed licensing the technology and hiring its developer, a 26-year-old PhD student at an Australian university. By Antone Gonsalves TechWeb.com Apr 11, 2006 06:54 PM Google Inc. on Tuesday confirmed that it has licensed a search algorithm from an Australian university that says the technology delivers expanded results that make it more likely people will chose the right link to the most relevant Web page. The technology called "Orion" was developed by Ori Allon, 26, a PhD student at the University of New South Wales. Google confirmed licensing the search engine, which is owned by the university, and hiring Allon, but declined to discuss its plans for the technology. "Google has purchased the assets of Orion and Ori Allon is now an employee," the Mountain View, Calif., company said in an emailed statement. "We're thrilled to have him here." According to a press release issued by the university last September, Orion is "new way of exploring the Web that could revolutionize existing search engines." The technology is meant to complement searches done on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft MSN or other providers. Orion finds pages where the content is about a topic strongly related to the keyword, and then returns a section of the page. It also lists other topics related to the key word so the user can pick the most relevant. The idea is to give enough information to more easily choose the Web sites that would be most useful to the searcher. Having to click through multiple Web sites in order to find relevant information is a common complaint among search engine users. Source
Sounds like goog was interested enough to buy out a potential, but smarter, competitor. This is a typical corporate move - buy out competition or potential competition. Especially competitors that are truly innovative and may be able to build, or have built, a better mousetrap. Plus isn't google sitting on about $10 Billion dollars worth of investment capital at the moment? Might as well spend it on sumpin.
That's how big companies become bigger. The people in suits, throw money at the people with brains, who make the company stcok grow, which allows the people in suites to throw mmore money at the people with brains ....
Well if they just let him be someone else (ie MSN) could of hired the guy and given google some competition with relevant results. What i think is perhaps this guy cracked googles algorhitm (or something similar) so they took him in before we saw mini googles pop up
I already says Ori Allon is smart at Computer Science , not business. He may be loan a bank and create his own search engine to beat the market , But he may not know. , If he read the biography of dotcoms company like amazon yahoo google cnet etc. or the dead one boo.com , I think he'll never sell "Orion" to google (As the news said Orion can revolutionize existing search engine) Now , Allon is G's important employee ,google will pay extremely high wages for let Allon not go to yahoo! / ms or creating his own search engine.
Yup, I just saw this when searching Google. A little blue arrow with the ALT text "click for more information" shows up. I'm happy to see that my site was the only one on the page with the arrow.