Microsoft and is aimed mainly at small and medium businesses.
So is Autonomy's share price due for a further fall? So far, it has not dropped as far as its US peers. Broadvision and Vignette (VIGN), two e-business companies, have both fallen 93 per cent from their 52-week highs. Inktomi (INKT), another producer of search-engine software, has dropped 97 per cent to $6.12 from $241.50. Nomura analyst Keith Woolcock suggests that Autonomy's share price has become divorced from any rational assessment of the company's potential: "The nub of Autonomy is a ratings problem. Is it a great share or is it a great company?"
Autonomy's 400-year-old roots
An 18th century theologian and mathematician is playing an influential role in the new-technology companies of the 21st century. Both Autonomy and fellow software company Applied Psychology Research depend on the methodologies developed by Thomas Bayes, born in London in 1702. Bayes developed a mathematical way of expressing probability inference - the means of working out how probable an event in the future is, based on how frequently it has occurred in the past. His Essay Towards Solving A Problem In The Doctrine Of Chances, published in 1763, explained his findings. It has strongly influenced today's statisticians and IT visionaries.
Bayesian inference is helping computers to understand Web pages, documents and people in a way that enables them to respond in a much more relevant and automated way to the needs of users. Microsoft has no less than 25 Bayesian specialists on the payroll.
The Bayesian technique is a perfect tool for today's super-fast computers, which have to wade through masses of data for relevant information. Using Bayes's theorems, they can quickly work out a probable result from a welter of prior occurrences.
It all depends on your mood
How psychological profiling can help Web sites
Intuitive mood marketing over the Internet is upon us. It is being made possible by a UK company whose software combines psychological techniques with the Bayesian pattern-recognition technology made famous by Cambridge-based Autonomy.
Applied Psychology Research has developed a method to help users of online services to find what they want depending on their mood or behaviour patterns. For example, pre-registered visitors to a Web video retailer could be presented with movie choices such as happy or sad, romantic or violent, and funny or dramatic.
The company was founded in 1997 by Dan Brown, straight after he graduated with a doctorate in clinical psychology, and former philosopher John Turner, a lecturer in Multimedia Information Systems at London Guildhall University.
Brown, who ran a computer games software company from the age of 13 until he finished school, applied his experience of building interactive stress models to APR's projects.
The co-founders' first projects were not related to the Internet. They developed an emotionally based classification program for books, which is now being used by 50 libraries.
Borrowers make selections on sliding "fuzzy logic" scales between funny or serious, sex or no sex and 20 other categories. The software then uses these responses to work out the best book for the reader. APR's literary success was then followed with a CD-Rom for the Poetry Society.
Last year, the company launched Youmeus, Internet software that captures implicit and explicit feedback from users through the way they navigate Web sites and make choices or clearly state preferences. This "adaptive personalisation system" helps companies target customers with the products they need.
"Psychiatry works on the model of assessment and intervention, and then monitoring the efficacy of that intervention," says Brown, now chief executive of APR. "Our software does the same for the needs of end consumers. The system can provide a specific need and also deliver items that correspond to people's traits."
APR currently employs more than 50 staff and its software has been used by companies such as the Co-Op, Affinity Internet, Mytaxi.com and Blockbuster (BBI). "We think of Autonomy as our peers. Adding value through humanising technology is new and we are leading the
