Alon previously stated that the university had registered a patent on the invention.
"For example, if you search for information on the War of Independence, you'll receive a list of related words, like Etzel, Palmach, Ben-Gurion," he explained. The text will only appear on the results page if enough words relevant to the search and the link between them are reasonable. Orion also rates the texts by quality of the site in which they appear.
Google has acquired an advanced text search algorithm invented by Ori Alon, an Israeli student. Sources believe Yahoo and Microsoft were also negotiating with the University of New South Wales in Australia, where Alon was a doctoral student in computer science.
Google, Alon and the university all refused to comment, though Google confirmed that "Ori Alon works at Google's Mountain View, California offices."
The University acknowledged that Yahoo and Microsoft had conducted negotiations with its business development company.