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.

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Source: SMH