Google Wins Rights to Aussie Algorithm

rcbutcher writes to tell us the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Google has just acquired the rights to a brand new text search algorithm invented by a University of NSW student. From the article: "Orion works as an add-on to existing search engines to improve the relevance of search and won praise from Microsoft founder Bill Gates last year. [...] Orion finds pages where the content is about a topic strongly related to the key word. 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."

Very fishy

[smallpaul]

First, it is funny how various countries are putting a nationalistic spin on it. Israeli newspapers are focusing on the fact that the inventor is an Israeli. Australian newspapers are focusing on the fact that he is Australian. Only the national newspapers are spinning this as "revolutionary technology."

Second, the description sounds alot like what Google and others do already.

Third, buying a single algorithm is not generally such a big deal. Maybe it is reasonably valuable. Maybe so valuable that Google paid ten million dollars for it. In the big scheme of things, that's chump change for them and for their competitors.

The whole thing sounds overhyped to me.

Re:Rights

[David Hume]

Besides, the summary says they didn't hire him; they bought the rights to use an algorithm he invented.

No, the summary doesn't say that "they didn't hire him." In any event, the article states:

Mr Andrew Stead, the business development manager at UNSW's NewSouth Innovations agency confirmed that Mr Allon left Australia six weeks ago and was now working at Google's headquarters at Mountain View, California.

Re:What's with the headline?

[dubl-u]

Since when are "wins" and "buys" interchangable verbs?

At an auction, or any time multiple parties are competing to buy something. From TFA:

Mr Stead confirmed that the university had held talks with the big three internet search operations: Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

Re:Holy Hypes, Batman!

[ppanon]

I highly doubt the novelty/effectiveness of this "algorithm" if it has been patented before being published in a peer-reviewed journal.
In nearly every country other than the US, publication disqualifies an invention from patent eligibility.

Oooh you mean they replaced Boyer Moore? That's to

[Deliveranc3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyer-Moore_algorithm [wikipedia.org] Not a bad algorithm.

Re:Intellectual ownership

[Killshot]

This is pretty standard for universities. And they are pretty good at making sure the people who did the actual work get something out of it too.

Re:Intellectual ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pretty standard for universities.

This part is true.

And they are pretty good at making sure the people who did the actual work get something out of it too.

Unfortunately, this part is only true in some locations and some departments. Specific terms for this are rarely written into contracts, and it is usually up to the discretion of a dean or other official. This is unfortunate, because it keeps a lot of bright people out of academia.

It's rather frustrating for researchers to do their work at lower-than-industry salaries, and then when they develop something of value, the university takes all the royalties, or maybe at most returns a miniscule fraction as a travel grant, or some other token gesture.

New patent

[Anonymous Coward]

A method by which, when a search engine user enters keywords into the interface, the search engine first looks up all alphabetical words longer than four characters in the wikipedia entry of each individual keyword with a length of four characters or more. It then proceeds to sort all found pages weighted by the incidence of these associated wikipedia words. Alternatively, the search engine every so often sucks the wikipedia dry of its keywords per entry and uses the accumulated wisdom to weigh sorting of pages found by keywords given by the user (search engine caching). Additionally, other resources besides the wikipedia (dictionary.com etc.) may be used to find relevant associations for a keyword. Additionally, by using 'tagging', or click-incidence by the search engine user, the relevance of these alternate resources may be weighed in itself. Additionally, resources may be added on a dynamic basis by search engine users, where they start at the bottom of the list.

Re:Intellectual ownership

[zoomba]

These rules vary from school to school. At Penn State, as an undergrad, I am almost 100% sure that if you come up with something, even if you use school resources to develop and prototype it, it's still yours.

If you're a grad student though, it belongs to them.

If you work for the University while an undergrad, the lines get murky.

The actual patent applications

[ill dillettante]

I don't have access to the patent applications as they were only filed late last year, but the the two relevant patents are:

Australian Application Number 2005906358
Applicant(s) Newsouth Innovations Pty Ltd
Inventor(s) Allon, Ori
Martin, Eric
Title A method and a system for facilitating ranking of textual information
Status Filed
Filing Date 16 November 2005
Date of Patent 16 November 2005

Patent Application Type Provisional
Australian Application Number 2005905853
Applicant(s) Newsouth Innovations Pty Ltd
Inventor(s) Allon, Ori
Martin, Eric
Title Methods and systems for facilitating ranking of an advertisement
Status Filed
Filing Date 20 October 2005
Date of Patent 20 October 2005

This makes me suspect that there is more to this story the SMH is reporting!

Re:His future is so bright, he's got to wear shade

[TopShelf]

And really, other than the novelty can, Fosters isn't really that good of a beer. Somewhere between Bud and Miller, (which is pretty darn low) on my scale...