Details about Become.com's patent application for the algorithm behind product-oriented search engine turned up at John Batelle's blog.  The patent looks like it's a shard off Wisenut search engine.  Interesting.

I talked with Michael Yang today.  The funny thing was that he didn't recognize me other than as Don Park the blogger and a fellow UC Berkeley man.  I guess mySimon and NetGeo experience took it's toll because, when we met for the first time many years ago, we talked about working together.  I decided not to because he already had a good partner, Yeogirl Yun, and financing was not quite there.  So we went our separate ways and he and Yeogirl went on to make millions with mySimon.  I'll have to get together with him sometime and refresh his memory with a bit of Soju.  Hehe.

Anyway, he said the recent press tour was very promising and Become.com site is picking up significant number of new users everyday.  Well, he has a tough, albeit familiar, road ahead so a rosy start can't hurt.

Re complaints about BecomeBot, Michael said they changed it in response to the complaints to be much less annoying.  He is also using Technorati daily to keep track of user opinions.  If you got something to say to him, just write a post mentioning Become.com.  Fantastic.  I wish more CEOs are as blogosphere-savvy.