Google Wins Rights to Aussie Algorithm

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.

There’s no telling how much the algorithm sold for, but this is a pretty big deal. Apparently Microsoft and Yahoo were both eyeing it also, so we’ll have to wait and see if this can actually improve Google in a noticeable way. Check out the full posting at Slashdot.