Accoona

Accoona was an internet company having offices in Jersey City, New Jersey and Shanghai, China.  Their main product was a search engine that claimed to use artificial intelligence to better understand searches. On June 23, 2005, in the ABC Times Square studios, the AI Accoona Toolbar, driven by a Fritz 9 prototype, drew against the 33rd World Chess Champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov. In addition to traditional searches, it allows business profile searches,  and its signature "SuperTarget" feature.  Their exclusive partnership with China Daily, a large Chinese internet portal, was seen as a highly strategic move.

The CEO of Accoona was Valentine J. Zammit, formerly of 24/7 Real Media and Doubleclick.

After IPO problems, Accoona shuttered their doors 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 Domains and Search Facilities were acquired by Masterseek B2B Search Engine on October 30, 2008

Partnerships
Accoona provides the search technology to the Chinese portals Sina.com and Sohu. They also formed a 20-year exclusive partnership with China Daily.  Through this partnership, with China Daily and its widespread Chinese affiliates, Accoona expects 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 a lot of attention after selecting former President Bill Clinton as a spokesperson on December 8, 2004.
 Accoona also received significant coverage from the webmaster community after many forum sites were spammed with promotional Accoona entries.
 Accoona was selected among the 50 Coolest Websites  of year 2006 by Time Magazine

See also
Masterseek

References

External links
 Accoona SuperTarget - Official site and search engine portal
 Accoona Europe
 Accoona China
 Bill Clinton Goes Searching from Business 2.0 -  December 8, 2004.
  Accoona: Moving Up by Getting Low from Alexa Internet - March 30, 2005.
 Play chess against the AI Accoona Toolbar online
 Accoona Business model is based on Pay per Lead, their platform is called www.exchangeplace.com

Category:Internet search engines