Accoona was an internet company with offices in

Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Shanghai, China Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

. Their main product was a

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

that claimed to use

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

to better understand searches. On June 23, 2005, in the ABC

Times Square Studios Times Square Studios (TSS) is an American television studio owned by The Walt Disney Company, located on the southeastern corner of West 44th Street and Broadway in Times Square, Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The studio is best known as the ...

, the AI Accoona Toolbar, driven by a

Fritz Fritz originated as a German nickname for Friedrich, or Frederick (''Der Alte Fritz'', and ''Stary Fryc'' were common nicknames for King Frederick II of Prussia and Frederick III, German Emperor) as well as for similar names including Fridolin an ...

9 prototype, played against the chess grandmaster

Rustam Kasimdzhanov Rustam Kasimdzhanov; russian: Рустам Касымджанов (born 5 December 1979) is an Uzbek chess grandmaster and former FIDE World Champion (2004-05). He was Asian champion in 1998. In addition to his tournament play, Kasimdzhan ...

. In addition to traditional searches, it allows business profile searches, and its signature "SuperTarget" feature. Their exclusive partnership with ''

China Daily ''China Daily'' () is an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. Overview ''China Daily'' has the widest print circulation of any English-language newspaper in China. T ...

'', a large Chinese

internet portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...

, was seen as a highly strategic move. The CEO of Accoona was Valentine J. Zammit, formerly of 24/7 Real Media and

DoubleClick DoubleClick Inc. was an advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to adv ...

. After

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

problems, Accoona shut down on October 5, 2008. In October 2008 the web page said: "Dear Accoona search users, Due to an overwhelmingly competitive search market, Accoona.com and Accoona.cn will no longer be active. We thank you for your previous support. Sincerely, Accoona Management." Accoona's domains and search facilities were acquired by

Masterseek Masterseek Corp. is a Business-to-business, B2B (business-to-business) search engine founded in Denmark in 1999. Masterseek now encompasses 175 million business profiles, 346 million websites, and 450 million contacts of which 216 million are Lin ...

B2B (business-to-business) search engine on October 30, 2008.

Partnerships

Accoona provides the search technology to the Chinese portals

Sina.com Sina Corporation (, "new wave") is a Chinese technology company. Sina operates four major business lines: Sina Weibo, Sina Mobile, Sina Online, and Sinanet. Sina has over 100 million registered users worldwide. Sina was recognized by '' South ...

and

Sohu Sohu, Inc. () is a Chinese Internet company headquartered in the Sohu Internet Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing. Sohu and its subsidiaries offer advertising, a search engine (Sogou.com), on-line multiplayer gaming (ChangYou.com) and other ser ...

. They also formed a 20-year exclusive partnership with ''

''. Through this partnership, with ''China Daily'' and its widespread Chinese affiliates, Accoona expected 10 million hits daily from the otherwise isolated Chinese user base. Accoona signed a million dollar deal with FAST Search from Norway to help enhance their rankings.

Press

* Accoona received attention after selecting former President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

as a spokesperson on December 8, 2004. * Accoona also received significant coverage from the

webmaster A webmaster is a person responsible for maintaining one or more websites. The title may refer to web architects, web developers, site authors, website administrators, website owners, website coordinators, or website publishers. The duties of ...

community after many forum sites were spammed with promotional Accoona entries. * Accoona was selected among the "50 Coolest Websites" of 2006 by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine.

References

{{reflist

External links

Accoona Business Directory
Internet search engines