Google Acquires Kaltix for Personalization Search Technology
As we weblogged back in August, Kaltix was a "coming soon" stage startup out of Stanford University that had some very promising content personalization technologies - so promising that Google, in its efforts to step up its search technology, has acquired it. As we noted in August, personalization technology without consensus-based capabilities such as Google offers are only half the solution to providing contextual content value. Looks like Google has solved that problem. The Register says that Kaltix may be on board to spice up Google's PageRank(tm) technology; Jeremy Zawodny speculates further in his weblog that Page Rank is getting long in the tooth and unable to adjust effectively to new sources such as weblogs and increasing expectations of advertising clients. Kaltix may bring capabilities to the table that allow a more personalized sense of popularity work its way into contextual search results, so that specific topics can be tuned to a community's interests more effectively. Whatever the rationale, Google is scrambling hard to eliminate smugness as public companies with more investor accountability begin to target them more effectively.