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Google Gets A9 Search Chief

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the not-often-i-get-read-the-word-nabbed dept.

award tour writes "Red Herring has a story that Google has nabbed yet another high ranking employee from a competitor. Udi Manber, former CEO of A9, has joined Google as vice president of engineering. As slashdot readers would know 'Last year, Microsoft was involved with Google in a dispute over Google hiring away Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, the vice president of Microsoft's Natural Interactive Services division, and appointing him as the head of Google's research and development center in China'"

67 comments

  1. Oh noes! by voice_of_all_reason · · Score: 0, Redundant

    My employees, stolen!!!oneone

    //don't cry, emo companies!

  2. Left As An Exercise For The Reader by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 5, Funny
    Given:
    1. Constant X = The sentence "How'd you like to be a Vice President at Google?"
    2. Variable Y = A geek
    Prove:

    X + Y = "Hell, yes!" for all values of Y.

    --

    Obliteracy: Words with explosions

    1. Re:Left As An Exercise For The Reader by aralin · · Score: 1

      It is easily disproved for any Y being a geek and senior VP at Apple :)

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    2. Re:Left As An Exercise For The Reader by SurgeonGeneral · · Score: 3, Informative

      Udi Manber is definately a geek.

      --
      -- "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Jean Jacques Rousseau
    3. Re:Left As An Exercise For The Reader by Andrzej+Sawicki · · Score: 1

      Right, that one would likely buy Google. Or sell Apple to Google to gain control of Google. Or something. ;)

  3. Some geeks get the best names. by Caspian · · Score: 2, Funny

    First, there was "Havoc Pennington". And now there is "Udi Manber". That sounds... I donno, it sounds kind of like the secret identity of a superhero from some funkadelic Blade Runner future...

    --
    With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
    1. Re:Some geeks get the best names. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      MOE: Moe's Tavern.
      BART: I'm looking for an Udi. Udi Manber.
      MOE: (shouting to bar patrons) Uhh, Udi Manber? Hey guys, has anyone found Udi Manber?!
      PATRONS: (laughing)
      BARNEY: No, keep looking for it! (Laughing)
      MOE: Why, you-- (into phone) The next time I see you I'm going to (random threats)
      BART: (laughing, hangs up)

    2. Re:Some geeks get the best names. by belmolis · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My favorite crazy geek name is "Ransom Love", once CEO of Caldera.

    3. Re:Some geeks get the best names. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Think of Scot Hacker

    4. Re:Some geeks get the best names. by paedobear · · Score: 1

      "Randy Bender", who was a hilighted NCSE beats them all, I think

  4. IT company employee trading by msbmsb · · Score: 5, Funny

    So how long until we start seeing "IT Company Employee" trading cards? It sounds like these guys are being moved around like baseball players.

    "Hey, I got Kai-Fu Lee's Bachelor's card!" "Cool, but you know after he got traded to Google, his publication stats tanked."

    1. Re:IT company employee trading by skoaldipper · · Score: 1
      on this news as Amazon hires old Intel research director...

      Shares of Amazon dropped $0.22 to $37.30 in recent trading

      Makes sense. The outgoing Amazon exec will be missed.

      while shares of Google fell $9.05 to $358.87

      That's weird. I would expect up. Maybe investor fears of future lawsuits.

      and Intel shares rose a penny to $20.68.

      Aha! The market never lies...
      --
      I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
  5. A9 president overheard... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    "Udi Manber? I'll fucking kill him"

  6. Coaxing by Billosaur · · Score: 4, Funny
    Amazon.com has appointed a new chief executive, David Tennenhouse, 48, for its A9.com search unit after the former chief, Udi Manber, was coaxed away by Google to become the search giant's vice president of engineering.

    Here chief execuuuutive, gooood chief execuuuutive... come to Google... we've got some nice carrots for youuuuuuuu... C'mon, that's it...

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
    1. Re:Coaxing by lou2112 · · Score: 1

      It's amazing to think that Amazon wouldn't have a non-compete clause in the guy's contract to prevent this from happening. It's not unusual for one to be barred from working in the same field or for a competitor within a particular time frame (e.g., one year).

    2. Re:Coaxing by Riktov · · Score: 1

      No, no, no, Manber was coaxed whereas Tennenhouse was twisted-paired.

  7. What I'd Like to Know... by garrett714 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Are all of A9's chairs still intact?

    1. Re:What I'd Like to Know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [checks]

      Yeah. None got thrown.

    2. Re:What I'd Like to Know... by herberts · · Score: 1

      Was he A9's chair man?

  8. betamatrix.google.com by Tackhead · · Score: 2, Insightful
    > Last year, Microsoft was involved with Google in a dispute over Google hiring away Dr. Kai-Fu Lee the vice president of Microsoft's Natural Interactive Services division, and appointing him as the head of Google's research and development center in China'

    In other news, images.google.com just added a new feature: object recognition. In the beta version, pictures of tanks (and irregular patches of colors ranging from #FF0000 through #CC3333) can be automatically recognized by software. In the production version just released last month, server-side digital reconstruction is employed to restore the areas of photographs that had formerly been obscured by such objects.

    "Whoa. We know Kai-Fu."

    1. Re:betamatrix.google.com by voice_of_all_reason · · Score: 1, Troll

      heh, that took a while to figure out, but I got it :)

      I'd mod you up, but I've been here for 2 or 3 months and never seen any mod points :(

    2. Re:betamatrix.google.com by Cal+Paterson · · Score: 1

      Karma. If you build it, they will come.

    3. Re:betamatrix.google.com by chris+macura · · Score: 1

      Bye bye karma!

  9. Corporate extractions... by db32 · · Score: 1

    I wonder how far these things will go. I seriously doubt this trend is going to go away, and is likely to get much more prevalent. I also wonder how the "Get your Microsoft Certification now and make $70,000 a year" schools may start to drive this. The talented and experienced people are going to be in high demand, and its easier to take someone elses trained, experienced, and talented individuals than sorting through the pools of the certification mill hordes.

    --
    The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
  10. Who is Udi Manber? by soboroff · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not that it's so hard to hunt up his homepage(s), but the summary is that Udi Manber was a very big name in web search before web search became big business. He wrote agrep, Glimpse, Harvest, and other nifty things.

    This is a different kind of hire than snagging that guy from Microsoft.

    1. Re:Who is Udi Manber? by Otter · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Oh yeah, Harvest! That brings back some mid-90's memories of rainbow horizontal-divider GIF's and animated letter-folding-into-an-envelope mailto icons. Damn it, now I have a Hootie and the Blowfish song stuck in my head!

      Come to think of it, I don't think any of those Harvest search boxes ever once returned anything meaningful.

      --
      What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    2. Re:Who is Udi Manber? by bburns · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Udi Manber was a professor at the University of Arizona back in the day when Web pages were grey and most of the Web could still be viewed in the text-based browser Lynx. He tortured students (myself included) in classes like Algorithms, his specialty, and Automatas, Grammars, and Languages. Actually, he was pretty level-headed for a university professor. Instead of teaching his students how to recite algorithms and theory from a big cookbook, he taught us how to understand and develop them from scratch--for the most part, that is. One thing I'll never forget is that you never understand proofs of NP-complete reductions, you just get used to them. For more, his book, Introduction to Algorithms: A Creative Approach, is recommended reading.

      Since the University of Arizona was a research institution, he applied his expertise in algorithms to the Web. That was his ticket out of academia into the real world, including stopovers at Yahoo!, A9, (and others?) and now Google. The moral of this little story: useful things can actually come out of academia!

  11. Google found out how to "one-up" Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Instead of just buying the company to "innovate", they can just grab key people and do it without the overhead of figuring out what works/doesn't (they already did) and all those pesky non-star employees.

    1. Re:Google found out how to "one-up" Microsoft by Duhavid · · Score: 1

      I believe Microsoft has grabbed key people before.

      The guy credited with architecting NT, Dave something
      comes to mind. Also, didnt they hire some Borland
      developers away? Compiler team guys, cant remember
      the details.

      --
      emt 377 emt 4
    2. Re:Google found out how to "one-up" Microsoft by Ellen+Spertus · · Score: 1

      Dave Cutler

  12. Like Apple by 4D6963 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It seems that Google follows the path of our beloved Steve Jobs by looking for the best hires. I see that as a big common point between Google and Apple actually, smart people hiring lots of even smarter people.

    Sounds like it's the magic formula in the IT world.

    --
    You just got troll'd!
    1. Re:Like Apple by LordLucless · · Score: 1

      It's the magic formula in every world

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    2. Re:Like Apple by 4D6963 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe, but as Steve Jobs pointed out in the past, it's more specific to the IT world. The Good Hire/Bad Hire ratio must be at the highest in this world

      --
      You just got troll'd!
    3. Re:Like Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      heh, so, are you calling Steve "Chair throwing" Ballmer smarter than Bill Gates?

    4. Re:Like Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It seems that Google follows the path of our beloved Steve Jobs by looking for the best hires.

      Yeah, trying to hire good workers is a brilliant idea that only a few companies like Apple and Google practice. Most companies try to hire subpar employees.

      Hiring good employees, not bad employees. Brilliant!

    5. Re:Like Apple by 4D6963 · · Score: 1
      "Hiring good employees, not bad employees. Brilliant!"

      Tell Microsoft.

      More seriously, everyone is aware that have good employees is better than have bad employees. However, alot of companies underestimate the difference it can make.

      --
      You just got troll'd!
  13. Tricksy headhunters! by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Funny
    > My employees, stolen!!!oneone

    Precious is gone. No precious. Stolen from us! Wicked tricksy headhunters, alwaysss after our precious! Stealing them with offerses of cafffeteriasses full of ruined fisshes! We ought to wring their filthy little necks! Throw chairses at them them! Fucking kill them all!

    1. Re:Tricksy headhunters! by sahala · · Score: 1

      this is great

    2. Re:Tricksy headhunters! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ripper. I must have read dozens of Golem jokes (and Balmer jokes) here and this is the first one that made my laugh at all. And I'm pissing myself laughing. Nice one.

  14. Hmmm... by Otter · · Score: 3, Funny

    So, does he still get his A9 discount at Amazon? Or did Google have to kick him another billion dollars in stock (which he'll sell, prompting another story from Zonk about how this demonstrates Google management's commitment to their company's future) to make up for the extra 3% he'll be paying for O'Reilly books?

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  15. .. and ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    .. and he was Yahoo's chief searching tech before A9. This guy's a badass, I was lucky enough to have taken a class with him at the UA in '93. Named my cat after him. True story.

  16. would you work for them? by slackaddict · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Given their latest "sellout" (or whatever you want to call it) to get into the Chinese search market, would you maybe think twice before you accepted a job offer from Google? I mean, it would be pretty interesting to work with the caliber of people they have working for them now, but what if they turn into the next Microsoft and you contributed to the next Evil Empire(tm).

    With all of the hiring of so much top talent and the fact that they now have shareholders and eeeeeeevil governments that they censor information for, kindof makes me nervous... I dunno, I guess I need to adjust my tinfoil hat.

    --
    ConsultingFair.com
  17. MOD PARENT FUNNY by Rodness · · Score: 1

    *lol* If only my modpoints hadn't expired yesterday. Sorry dude, you'd have gotten one from me for sure.

  18. Mods on crack, or are working for PLA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    > > head of Google's research and development center in China
    >
    >In other news, images.google.com just added a new feature: object recognition. In the beta version, pictures of tanks (and irregular patches of colors ranging from #FF0000 through #CC3333) can be automatically recognized by software. In the production version just released last month, server-side digital reconstruction is employed to restore the areas of photographs that had formerly been obscured by such objects.

    This is a reference to the Google.com vs. Google.cn side-by-side image search, requires Javascript. Mods are on crack, working for google.cn, or both.

  19. should not that be th eother way around? by BigGerman · · Score: 1
    I dont know how much a9 is a competitor for Google (never used it and dont know anyone who had), but typically if one company is a technology leader for technology X and the other one is trying to catch up, it is the other one who will try to lure the people from the first one.

    One would think that search is Google's core competetency so there is little in getting the other guy to learn from him and his ways.

    1. Re:should not that be th eother way around? by AnotherDaveB · · Score: 4, Informative
      One would think that search is Google's core competetency so there is little in getting the other guy to learn from him and his ways.

      A9 grew out of Alexa. Cringely interviewed Alexa's founder who pointed out a difference in Alexa's and Google's approach

      So Google is - uses as a ranking mechanism how many people link to an article. .... Alexa was also based around meta data. It was people who visited this site also visited this site. ... So using people's trails as a mechanism of finding what's important out of the net.

      So perhaps pagerank will be / is informed by analysing individual websurfers?

      Amazon (who own A9/Alexa) use the same technology to suggest purchase Recommendations to you.

    2. Re:should not that be th eother way around? by bigbigbison · · Score: 1

      A9 also uses Google search results. At the bottom of the search results it says, "Search results enhanced by Google. Results also provided by a9.com and Alexa."

      From that, however, it isn't entirely clear if A9 is just using google's search results or if they actually are doing some of their own search voodoo. I did one search on both and it looked like they both gave the same results in the same order, but one example doesn't prove anything.

      --
      http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
    3. Re:should not that be th eother way around? by AnotherDaveB · · Score: 1
      A9 also uses Google search results. At the bottom of the search results it says, "Search results enhanced by Google. Results also provided by a9.com and Alexa."

      I didn't know that.

      From that, however, it isn't entirely clear if A9 is just using google's search results or if they actually are doing some of their own search voodoo.

      I tried a search for marzipan recipe the results matched a google.com search as you suggest so Alexa's contribution would seem to be the

      people who visit this page also visit..

      that you see if you mouse over the "site info" button.

      If you look at Google's privacy policy for the Google Toolbar we see

      Google may collect information about web pages that you are viewing when the advanced functionality is enabled. However, this advanced functionality is optional, and can be easily disabled and re-enabled at any time (by selecting "Privacy Information..." in the Toolbar's "Google" menu.)

      So Google appear to be interested in analysing individual browser's web trails, and collecting data, already.

    4. Re:should not that be th eother way around? by Cal+Paterson · · Score: 1

      In Google China, we recommend you for purchase.

    5. Re:should not that be th eother way around? by srid · · Score: 1
      So Google is - uses as a ranking mechanism how many people link to an article. .... Alexa was also based around meta data. It was people who visited this site also visited this site. ... So using people's trails as a mechanism of finding what's important out of the net.
      Amazon develops pheromonetrail which is a coincidence.
      --
      - srid
  20. One thing that really sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    is that if you want to work with smart people, the pressure of acing a Google interview is much more intense.

  21. Udi's a smart guy by TFoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I never understood why he was CEO at A9...he's definitely a scientist and *not* a CEO type. I assumed that the weird A9-is-a-company-but-really-part-of-Amazon thing allowed him to do it: but I can't imagine it was the best use of him.

  22. Lemme Guess: Did it go something like.... by HalfOfOne · · Score: 0, Troll

    Udi, ouldway ouyay ikelay otay akemay otslay ofway oneymay?

  23. Udi Man? by Gorimek · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, You the man!!

    (I bet he's sick of that joke...)

    1. Re:Udi Man? by locoluis · · Score: 1

      Hahahaha. You the man bear.

      Yes, he's sick of it. :)

      --
      --- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
  24. Follow the money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    That is all this is, executives accepting higher salaries at another company.

    All Google have demonstrated is that they are able to use their wallets to amass high-ranking employees with little loyalty to their workmates, and vanishingly small passion for their projects -- the key ingredients to stagnation in a once dynamic company.

  25. Give the marginal jokes a rest! by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    It would be nice if Slashdot discussions were more thoughtful, I think, instead of writing all the marginally funny and unfunny jokes.

    So, I will try to mention something that goes in that direction:

    Basically, the fact that companies steal people from each other means that there are very, very few people who both have excellent technical knowledge, and are good managers. Otherwise, why hire someone from a competitor?

    I think that one of the reasons for this is that programmers often take an insufficiently complex view of their lives. I expanded on that idea in this comment: Toward more perfect programmers.

    1. Re:Give the marginal jokes a rest! by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 1
      Awww, lighten up. Cheap jokes are good for your health.

      If you want discussion of your "Toward more perfect programmers" comment, though, here it is:

      You need hard data. You're drawing too many broad conclusions from anecdotal evidence.

      The problem is that many people involved with computers fundamentally don't actually work for their company. Instead, they do only what they perceive is best for them. Generally, when such people are programmers they want a resume that shows familiarity with many computer languages.

      But is there anything that distinguishes the programmer from, say, the lawyer, the salesman, or the drill-press operator? Couldn't you say pretty much the same thing about your typical employee, regardless of their trade?

      That kind of short-term vision works because of the brokenness of the human resources department of most technically-oriented companies. In most such companies, the top management has too little technical understanding. The top management tries to reduce salary expense by hiring people who will work cheaply, and that means people with minimal technical understanding.

      It isn't top management's job to have technical expertise. It is top management's job to run all aspects of the company and strive to make sure that the left hand knows what the right is doing. Similarly, an HR person cannot possibly hope to be well-versed in all the various technical disciplines they'll be hiring for. What most reasonable companies do is include technical teams in the hiring process; you'll have lead developers other techies interview candidates and report their decision up to HR. I'll readily grant that this isn't the perfect model, but any HR division worth their salt will know to include technical teams in a technical interview. If they don't, then you can be reasonably certain that they're botching things across the board, be it in hiring for sales, management, you name it.

      Poorly educated human resources people are impressed by someone who says he has familiarity with several computer languages. (Actually, human resources people aren't impressed at all; they only think the manager for which they are interviewing applicants will be impressed. Generally the people with no technical knowledge at a technically-oriented company have a secret belief that they are superior to those who work with grubby technical details.)

      Again, you're restricting a scenario to tech hires when a poorly-educated HR person will, in all likelyhood, do just as poorly with other departments they don't understand. You're also making rather lazy assumptions about the nature of non-techies in a technical organization. Building sociological arguments on a foundation of the "secret beliefs" of various types of worker is no way to go.

      Of course, it would be possible for someone to lie on a resume and claim knowledge of languages with which he or she had little experience. But that is regarded by most people as far too risky. The liklihood is that someone doing the interviewing would detect ignorance.

      Resume padding is as old as resumes. It's frighteningly common for people to lie on their resume; nobody ever expects to get caught. Again, this is a problem that transcends technical boundaries.

      So, many programmers want enough practice that they can claim familiarity with several languages. Such people can be expected to lead their companies into as many technologies as possible.

      That's a rather large leap in logic, there. What's to say that they're not just trying to get their foot in the door? If anything, you'd expect a programmer (or anyone else, for that matter) to fall back onto comfortable territory as much as possible once hired. What is the impetus for your typical worker to do things in a way that is new and unfamiliar to them?

      Now, if you were to argue that a new hire is more likely to look at an existing system that they're unfamiliar with and decide to re-build

      --

      Obliteracy: Words with explosions

  26. Amazon's ground level map service by Lord+Satri · · Score: 1

    I dont know how much a9 is a competitor for Google

    That's what Google might want to add to Google Local/Maps/Earth: Amazon offers street-level mapping, which no competitor does (yet, of course). You can read more about Amazon A9 mapping service here and here.

    --
    Animoog.org
  27. ObJoke... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I wouldn't employ a person whose work could be described as A9 search chief...

  28. google grid by wwmedia · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    1. hire brightest IT minds of today
    2. ???
    3. Google Grid aka Skynet??

    1. Re:google grid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dude, that was pathetic

  29. What's A9? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anybody?

  30. In a related story... by coolgeek · · Score: 1

    Jeff Bezos was observed breaking a chair in a conference room while screaming "I'm going to fucking kill Google!!!"

    --

    cat /dev/null >sig
  31. The beginning of the end by billcopc · · Score: 1

    I was looking forward to reading something about Google's hiring practices, followed by stimulating discussion, but there's a huge freaking FLASH AD covering the whole article and it doesn't even have an [X] button to close it. Who the hell approves these ad programs anyway ?

    Taco, oh Taco what have you done?!

    --
    -Billco, Fnarg.com