Apple Snags Amazon's Search King for Siri


William Stasior

Apple's headhunter team continues counting coup, as the company has hired the head of Amazon's search company, A9, to run Apple's Siri service. In an exclusive report, AllThingsD said that Apple has hired William Stasior, a former executive for AltaVista, who has run A9 since 2006.

A9 is an independent company Amazon started in 2003. A9 provides search services for Amazon', including product search, advertising search, cloud search, and more. The company also handles search for other online retail sites.

As noted by AllThingsD, Mr. Stasior's resume is impressive, and includes stints at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), Oracle, AltaVista, and his time at A9, which he attributed to both Amazon and A9, where he was CEO. His other geek credentials include a binary art version of himself he posted on his site.

Mr. Stasior's new gig at Apple is heading Apple's Siri service. We tend to think of Siri as a voice technology, but it's really a search service that with a voice interface. In addition to being able to find (currently, some) things on your iPhone or iPad, it also conducts local search, finding you restaurants and other local businesses.

If you had any doubt about how to define Siri, Mr. Stasior's hiring should put them to rest.

This marks the second high-profile recruiting score for Apple. On October 111th, we learned that Apple had hired chip designer Jim Mergard from Samsung, the company that will soon be known as the company that used to make Apple's mobile chips.