5 ms·

I guess this has been ignored for awhile: Google started downtown. When they are referring to Amazon, I'm pretty sure that's A9 which was started as Altavista a

by cjensen 10y ago

I guess this has been ignored for awhile: Google started downtown. When they are referring to Amazon, I'm pretty sure that's A9 which was started as Altavista as a DEC project in the same building.

rgbrenner 10y ago
A9 is not related to altavista. Altavista was bought by overture, who was later bought by yahoo. A9 is completely unrelated... developed some of amazon's features -- inside the book; product search; q&a.
- cjensen 10y ago
  Odd coincidence that A9 is in Altavista's old building...
- DiabloD3 10y ago
  Also to add on this, A9 is their subsidiary that implements search engine functionality and data analytics at Amazon. "Amazon.com" is a 9 lettered word, not including the dot; "algorithms" is also a 9 lettered word. Udi Manber, the guy who invented agrep, has worked at Yahoo, Amazon, and now Google/YouTube (as a search engine engineer at all these places), and also wrote "Introduction to Algorithms", and co-invented suffix arrays with Gene Myers, was A9's first CEO. A former AltaVista executive and founder of A9, William Stasior, was the second CEO of A9, where he then wandered off to Apple as Vice President of Siri. Brian Pinkerton is now the General Manager of A9, and he is famous for starting one of the first search engines, WebCrawler, before AOL bought it, sold it to Excite, which then Blucora bought all those assets along with Dogpile. Blucora also owns TaxACT, Monoprice, and HowStuffWorks. A9 is currently located in the building that SurveyMonkey used to occupy, across from the Palo Alto Transit Center. So, yeah, the silicon valley culture is very weirdly interconnected.
  - dekhn 10y ago
    Udi doesn't work at Google now- he's at NIH. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/10/search-whiz-udi-manber-leaves-google/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/10/search-whiz-udi-manbe...

5 ms·

I guess this has been ignored for awhile: Google started downtown. When they are referring to Amazon, I'm pretty sure that's A9 which was started as Altavista a

by cjensen 10y ago

I guess this has been ignored for awhile: Google started downtown. When they are referring to Amazon, I'm pretty sure that's A9 which was started as Altavista as a DEC project in the same building.

rgbrenner 10y ago
A9 is not related to altavista. Altavista was bought by overture, who was later bought by yahoo. A9 is completely unrelated... developed some of amazon's features -- inside the book; product search; q&a.
- cjensen 10y ago
  Odd coincidence that A9 is in Altavista's old building...
- DiabloD3 10y ago
  Also to add on this, A9 is their subsidiary that implements search engine functionality and data analytics at Amazon. "Amazon.com" is a 9 lettered word, not including the dot; "algorithms" is also a 9 lettered word. Udi Manber, the guy who invented agrep, has worked at Yahoo, Amazon, and now Google/YouTube (as a search engine engineer at all these places), and also wrote "Introduction to Algorithms", and co-invented suffix arrays with Gene Myers, was A9's first CEO. A former AltaVista executive and founder of A9, William Stasior, was the second CEO of A9, where he then wandered off to Apple as Vice President of Siri. Brian Pinkerton is now the General Manager of A9, and he is famous for starting one of the first search engines, WebCrawler, before AOL bought it, sold it to Excite, which then Blucora bought all those assets along with Dogpile. Blucora also owns TaxACT, Monoprice, and HowStuffWorks. A9 is currently located in the building that SurveyMonkey used to occupy, across from the Palo Alto Transit Center. So, yeah, the silicon valley culture is very weirdly interconnected.
  - dekhn 10y ago
    Udi doesn't work at Google now- he's at NIH. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/10/search-whiz-udi-manber-leaves-google/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/10/search-whiz-udi-manbe...