kavinski
07-20-2005, 04:41 PM
Google just acquired a Brazilian company (Akwan) that will be the seed to their Latin American Reasearch Center.
The company they acquired:
www.akwan.com.br (http://www.akwan.com.br)
The press release about it: http://www.google.com.br/press/pressrel/akwan.html (http://http://www.google.com.br/press/pressrel/akwan.html)
Alexandre Kavinski
orion
07-26-2005, 04:21 AM
I've moved this thread here since I believe this place is more appropriate for the news that Google bought Akwan Information Technologies, which operates TodoBrazil (todobr.com.br), a search site that competed with Google.br. The www.todobr.com.br URL now redirects to www.google.com.br.
Akwan's technology, created by a group of university professors, becomes Google's research and development center for Latin America. (http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3521731)
Berthier Ribeiro-Neto, CEO of Akwan IT, and co-author with my dear friend Ricardo Baeza-Yates of "Modern Information Retrieval" will head the new Google Latin America R&D Centre.
Incidentally, in 2000 Ric launched a spin-off of Web searching technology which has as a showroom a search engine for the Chilean Web (www.todocl.com or www.todocl.cl ).
According to todocl site (http://www.todocl.cl/credits.phtml), "TodoCL es parte de una familia de buscadores que incluyen a TodoBr (Brasil)."
This is a great example on how academic IR research can lead to success stories.
I know Google will do better than, now in bankruptcy, AOL Latin America (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=6493), which was an inflated contender in Brazil and Latin America.
These are great news.
Orion