Hi-tech Israel

AOL, which, in 1998, bought the Israeli company, Mirabilis (ICQ), is buying Israeli again.

When US Internet giant America Online wants to go shopping for new Internet technologies, it heads to Israel. In less than a week, the Time Warner subsidiary has purchased two Israeli companies – Internet advertising technology company Quigo Technologies, for an estimated $350 million, and now search technology start-up Yedda, for an undisclosed sum.Yedda, a web 2.0 company, has developed a semantic search engine that differs from regular text-based search engines such as YahooAnswers or GoogleAnswers because it can automatically match questions to other related questions and topics, and select the best available users to answer the question. The patent-pending technology, which went live in August last year, intelligently routes questions to relevant communities of Internet users, sending out e-mails or instant messages to ‘experts’, and creating a large community of people who can discuss and learn from each other’s experiences. Content is rated for quality. This is the first Israeli Web 2.0 technology exit.
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The acquisition follows last week’s buy-out of Quigo, which develops customized content-based advertising technology and products for websites. Like Yedda, AOL, which is now undergoing restructuring, plans to maintain the company’s R&D center in Israel.

And Intel is getting a lot of help with its new “green” chip, from its development center in Israel.

On Saturday global computer company Intel unveiled its latest addition to its processor family: a new chipset provisionally named ‘Penryn.’ The innovative hafnium-based “Hi-k” processor, which reduces electricity loss, or “capacitance,” through the use of third-generation silicon materials, also does away with the need to incorporate eco-unfriendly lead and halogen materials in the production process.”These are the biggest transistor advancements in 40 years,” Intel co-founder Gordon Moore said.

While the Penryn innovation was initially developed at Intel’s centers in California, the offices of Intel Israel, centered at their mammoth Research and Development Center in Haifa, played a crucial role in working out how the new chip micro-architecture could be manufactured on a commercial scale.

This is not the first time Intel has gotten a major innovation from Israel either.

Intel Israel scored its biggest coup to date in the 2003 development of the Centrino mobile chipset, which came, according to company spokesman Koby Bahar, as a “true breakthrough” in computing performance. The Centrino technology, initially designed for use in laptop computers, proved so fast and energy-effective that it rapidly began to appear in desktop PCs around the world as well.

I guess these are among the reasons that Israel’s stock market is doing so well.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.