Tuesday, February 08, 2005

The answer.com to Israel's hi-tech bust

According to Harry and Allison, the hot story in (certain circles in) Israel at the moment is not the Sharm summit -- but the wild success of an Israeli hi-tech company, GuruNet, which employs lots of Anglos and which is apparently going to sign major deals with Google and Amazon in the coming day or so. The company, whose shares are suddenly out of control, has just launched a site, www.answers.com, which gives you precise answers to your questions instead of a bunch of links. According to Forbes, "Answers.com is the most useful, smartest, coolest, easiest-to-use Web innovation to come around in years."*
Is the timing auspicious? The outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada/Oslo War/Arafat War/Second War of Attrition (!) spelt the death-knell of Israel's amazing hi-tech boom. I hope the fact that an Israeli hi-tech company is soaring so high on the very day that peace breaks out in the Middle East turns out to be a sign of things to come!

*Actually, the site clearly has a way to go. It could tell me who Rabbenu Gershom was, but not Rav Kook, and who the editor of the Jerusalem Post was, but not the editor of the Jerusalem Report (actually, it kind of suggested Natan Sharansky -- who was, before you scoff too much, once an editor at the magazine, but never THE editor and besides, that was a long time ago). Worst of all, it had no idea who Miriam Shaviv was. Apparently I'm "not one of the 1 million AnswerPages at Answers.com," although "Answers.com has AnswerPages for most words, phrases, places, famous people, companies, and more." Hmph.

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