By Stephen Hutcheon

A senior Google engineer has told how he was “wowed” by an Australian search engine tool developed at the University of New South Wales.

“I think it’s pretty special,” said Mr Rob Pike, a principal engineer at the world’s leading internet search company, speaking about the Orion search engine process.

Earlier this year, Google bought the rights to the advanced text search algorithm for an undisclosed sum and hired the doctoral student who developed it, Mr Ori Allon.

Mr Pike, who splits his year between Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California and the Sydney office, says he often visits universities and checks out research projects.
“[But] this is the first time I’ve walked out and said: ‘Wow! We should buy this stuff’. So it’s pretty unique,” Mr Pike said in an interview.

In a nutshell, Orion improves the relevance of responses to a search – and displays a more detailed taste of each file so users can better decide if it is what they need.
The results of the query are displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts, giving the searcher the relevant information without having to go to the website – although there is still that option.

Mr Allon was born and raised in Israel and came to Australia in the mid-’90s. He is now an Australian citizen and says he one day hopes to return to his adopted country.
After completing his bachelor and masters degrees at Melbourne’s Monash University, he moved to UNSW to further his studies and research.

Mr Allon’s PhD supervisor, Dr Eric Martin, will continue to do some work on the project at the UNSW’s Sydney campus. Although Mr Allon developed the process, the university still owns the intellectual property rights.
Speaking at the opening of Google Sydney offices earlier this month, Mr Pike says while he played no direct role in hiring Mr Allon or buying the rights to the algorithm, he acted as the “matchmaker”.

Late last year he and a colleague, Dr Lars Rasmussen, attended a function at the university awhere Mr Allon demonstrated his search tool.
“We were very impressed,” Mr Pike said. “So I emailed the Mountain View folks and said ‘you should check this out’.”

A few months later, Mr Pike bumped in to Mr Allon at the Google headquarters. “It turns out we hired him.”
Mr Pike, who is an industry veteran with a long list of credits to his name, said that because Orion was “so unusual” he could not say for sure how long it would take to bring Mr Allon’s work into day to day operation.

“You have to make a decision whether it’s a new product or you integrate it with an existing product,” Mr Pike said. “It takes time to work these things out.”
Dr Rasmussen, Google Australia’s head of engineering, says he was similarly impressed with Mr Allon and his search process.

“I remember meeting him [at the university last year] and then being very excited when I heard he was working for Google in Mountain View.”
Google is the world’s leading search engine. In April, it held a 43.1 per cent U.S. market share compared with Yahoo’s 28 per cent share. Microsoft’s MSN is third.
Earlier this month, Google’s CEO, Mr Eric Schmidt told reporters that his company wants to maintain its dominance in the search area by making a “heavy, heavy investment in new search algorithms”.
(An algorithm is a problem-solving computational procedure and is the building block for all search engines.)

Mr. Schmidt said that although the company had expanded in many directions, its core focus was still in search and search-related advertising.
“We have more people working on search than ever before,” the New York Times quoted him as saying. “You will see better search, more personal search and more international search.”
He said Google engineers were being encouraged to spend 70 per cent of their time on search-related projects.

“You have to make a decision whether it’s a new product or you integrate it with an existing product,” Mr Pike said. “It takes time to work these things out.”
Dr Rasmussen, Google Australia’s head of engineering, says he was similarly impressed with Mr Allon and his search process.

“I remember meeting him [at the university last year] and then being very excited when I heard he was working for Google in Mountain View.”
Google is the world’s leading search engine. In April, it held a 43.1 per cent U.S. market share compared with Yahoo’s 28 per cent share. Microsoft’s MSN is third.

Earlier this month, Google’s CEO, Mr Eric Schmidt told reporters that his company wants to maintain its dominance in the search area by making a “heavy, heavy investment in new search algorithms”.
(An algorithm is a problem-solving computational procedure and is the building block for all search engines.)

Mr. Schmidt said that although the company had expanded in many directions, its core focus was still in search and search-related advertising.
“We have more people working on search than ever before,” the New York Times quoted him as saying. “You will see better search, more personal search and more international search.”

He said Google engineers were being encouraged to spend 70 per cent of their time on search-related projects.