And the winner of the $1 million Netflix prize (probably) is … - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

After nearly three years and entries from more than 50,000 contestants, a multinational team says that it has met the requirements to win the million-dollar Netflix Prize: It developed powerful algorithms that improve the movie recommendations made by Netflix’s existing software by more than 10 percent.

The online movie rental service uses its Cinematch software to analyze each customer’s film-viewing habits and recommends other movies that customer might enjoy. Because accurate recommendations increase Netflix’s appeal to its customers, the movie rental company started a contest in October 2006, offering $1 million to the first contestant that could improve the predictions by at least 10 percent...