Google Gets Orion Under Its Belt
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Written By Reprise Media | April 10, 2006 | Share This
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Look out world, Google wants your search technology. Orion, a search tool patented last year by an Israeli student working at the University of New South Wales in Sydney (both Israel’s Haaretz and Australia’s Daily Telegraph are bursting with local pride), now resides in Mountain View. Google has snatched up the relevancy-enhancing application in a deal with the University of NSW reportedly worth millions, and they’ve hired its developer, Ori Allon, to boot.
Designed as a complement to search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN (the latter two were also in the running to acquire the technology), Orion works by finding “pages where the content is about a topic strongly related to the key word,” according to the original press release. “It then returns a section of the page, and lists other topics related to the key word so the user can pick the most relevant” without going through the hassle of clicking on the site’s link.
Danny Sullivan’s write-up tempers some of the enthusiastic language offered by The Daily Telegraph (e.g. “…the new search engine will provide expanded text extracts which will eradicate the need to open every link”). Says Sullivan, “Ho hum. Reality check, OK?” He notes that by returning sizeable swaths of external pages in search results, Orion could raise the ire of publishers already howling about what they perceive as fair use abuse by Google. And while Sullivan thinks obtaining Allon and his engine are good moves, he cautions, “the technology will probably give Google another evolutionary change that may improve things over time, rather than instantly.”
Topics: Google, Investment, M&A |