After ZDnet reporter Mary-Jo Foley revealed in a blog post that eBay had acquired Positronic in December, eBay's corporate blogger confirmed the news.
Positronic founder Chris Payne had formerly been Corporate Vice President of Windows Live Search at Microsoft and had also spent 3 years at Amazon.com. He is now Vice President of Search at eBay, and Positronic co-founder Dane Glasgow is Vice President of Engineering at eBay.
According to Microsoft's biography of Payne, "In that position, he focused on delivering the best search experience for customers and helping them find the information that is important to them. Payne also oversaw Windows Live Shopping, which enables customers to better discover, compare and decide what they would like to buy online."
eBay blogger Richard Brewer-Hay wrote of the acquisition, "I can also confirm that eBay has acquired Positronic to help with efforts at leveraging machine learning to provide a more predictive and compelling customer experience."
