Taking a look at Alexa Movers & Shakers I noticed Accoona, the new Web search engine that launched last December with the help of Bill Clinton, is racing up the rankings chart. In the last month they have seen their reach triple. Chart. They recently peaked on par with our favorite butler Jeeves own search engine, ask.com. So what's the story here? How is this possible?
After using the search engine, I have to admit, I am not impressed. It is OK, but I can see no reason to go back. The results are OK, but the index size is clearly limited. The ads are also crowding out the results, which is not a good experience for a first time user.
But still, people are visiting in droves. Perhaps it is because Accoona gave away a car at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference. Or perhaps it is because they are doing some stealthy (read: unethical) marketing. Recent blog posts indicate the Accoona is spamming the comments of numerous blogs as these humorous and angry posts attest. Link. Link. That's the bad news: spam works and Accoona is reaping the benefits of it's spamtastic marketing campaign.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Roll Your Own - A9 Search
I realize that this isn't news, but I've been avoiding mentioning it due to a conflict of interest. But now that the news articles and blog postings have slowed down, I feel free to add my 2 cents. A9's new "Add Columns" feature is great. If you are unfamiliar, you should go there now and click the "add columns" link. www.a9.com With this feature developers can integrate their own search into A9 and have it appear in the "add columns" area, and users can customize their search experience to add whichever search engines appeal to them.
This feature is great in two ways. 1) For users, it allows you to create a search engine that has all the features you want, without all the features you don't. For me, that meant adding Yellow Pages, Flickr search, Wikipedia search and Blog search. Forget about the old search engines that present the same interface to everybody. This is mine. 2) For other search engines and search services, they can easily add their search to the service. A9 has already added the NYTimes, thinkgeek, pubmed, creative commons and more. Lots more. At last count there were 112 different search columns available. This is a win win.
This feature is great in two ways. 1) For users, it allows you to create a search engine that has all the features you want, without all the features you don't. For me, that meant adding Yellow Pages, Flickr search, Wikipedia search and Blog search. Forget about the old search engines that present the same interface to everybody. This is mine. 2) For other search engines and search services, they can easily add their search to the service. A9 has already added the NYTimes, thinkgeek, pubmed, creative commons and more. Lots more. At last count there were 112 different search columns available. This is a win win.
Monday, March 21, 2005
Sold! Ask Jeeves and Flickr
This morning two big tech news stories caught my eye. Perennial also-ran search engine Ask Jeeves and hot new photo sharing service Flickr were both sold to big media companies.
IAC, the large media conglomerate with Home Shopping Network, Match.com, Expedia, and CitySearch.com, is buying Ask Jeeves for almost $2 Billion. Ask Jeeves also owns Excite.com, iWon.com and Teoma.com. When I mentioned this to a co-worker this morning I got back "When is the last time anybody went to Ask Jeeves and searched for something?" In a room full of 25 people, only one raised his hand. While I understand his point, I should mention that Ask Jeeves has come a long way. Their search results are quite good now and they have a lot of useful features. Give it a try.
On the surface $1.85 Billion looks like a lot of money, but there is a bigger picture here. Ask Jeeves powers a lot of searches. If you surf around the Web as much as I do, you will notice that a lot of sites use Ask Jeeves to power their searches. Take Lycos for example. About a week ago, Lycos switched from using Overture (a Yahoo company) to Ask. IAC is paying a 17 percent premium for Ask, but this is a relatively inexpensive 15 times Ask's cash flow, compared to Google and Yahoo's 25 times cash flow stock price.
It appears that IAC is going to begin building a portal, ala Yahoo, by combining their properties. I'm betting that within a year you will see Ask Jeeves simple home page loaded up with links to CitySearch, Expedia and Match.com, plus others. Somehow I don't think the synergy of these different sites will make me any more likely to visit.
Then there's Flickr. If you are unfamiliar, Flickr is a photo sharing site. Post your photos, tag them, and anybody can find them, view them, and even build applications using them. The key is an API that lets developers integrate Flickr photos into their apps. So, who bought Flickr? Yahoo! Not to be outdone by Google's purchase of Picasa, Yahoo is buying its way to credibility. But Flickr? Flickr is decidedly un-Yahoo-like. It's open API stands in stark contrast to most of Yahoo's top down closed culture. Hopefully Flickr will have more of an influence on Yahoo than the other way around.
IAC, the large media conglomerate with Home Shopping Network, Match.com, Expedia, and CitySearch.com, is buying Ask Jeeves for almost $2 Billion. Ask Jeeves also owns Excite.com, iWon.com and Teoma.com. When I mentioned this to a co-worker this morning I got back "When is the last time anybody went to Ask Jeeves and searched for something?" In a room full of 25 people, only one raised his hand. While I understand his point, I should mention that Ask Jeeves has come a long way. Their search results are quite good now and they have a lot of useful features. Give it a try.
On the surface $1.85 Billion looks like a lot of money, but there is a bigger picture here. Ask Jeeves powers a lot of searches. If you surf around the Web as much as I do, you will notice that a lot of sites use Ask Jeeves to power their searches. Take Lycos for example. About a week ago, Lycos switched from using Overture (a Yahoo company) to Ask. IAC is paying a 17 percent premium for Ask, but this is a relatively inexpensive 15 times Ask's cash flow, compared to Google and Yahoo's 25 times cash flow stock price.
It appears that IAC is going to begin building a portal, ala Yahoo, by combining their properties. I'm betting that within a year you will see Ask Jeeves simple home page loaded up with links to CitySearch, Expedia and Match.com, plus others. Somehow I don't think the synergy of these different sites will make me any more likely to visit.
Then there's Flickr. If you are unfamiliar, Flickr is a photo sharing site. Post your photos, tag them, and anybody can find them, view them, and even build applications using them. The key is an API that lets developers integrate Flickr photos into their apps. So, who bought Flickr? Yahoo! Not to be outdone by Google's purchase of Picasa, Yahoo is buying its way to credibility. But Flickr? Flickr is decidedly un-Yahoo-like. It's open API stands in stark contrast to most of Yahoo's top down closed culture. Hopefully Flickr will have more of an influence on Yahoo than the other way around.
Friday, March 11, 2005
P2P Software and the Klingons
Ben Edelman has compiled a fantastic review of Peer to Peer programs such as Kazaa, Morpheus and Limewire, uncovering the dirty truth of most p2p programs: in exchange for being free, most of the P2P programs load your machine up with spyware. Link.
Kazaa is particularly troublesome with a license that is 128 on screen pages in length, contains links to other licenses not shown, and installs Cydoor, GAIN, Instafinder and My Search Toolbar. Limewire appears to be the best of the bunch with no apparent spyware installed, but it has no license at all which seems suspicious. Read Ben's roundup for the complete analysis.
This gives me an opportunity to segue into this statement about the Alexa Toolbar. Alexa is free, but it does not bundle any software AND Alexa has no agreements to be bundled with other software packages. There is only one way to get the Alexa Toolbar: visit Alexa, then download and install it. And, if you install it you won't be downloading any "bundled" mysterious software.
One of the biggest problems with spyware beyond the obvious spying and crippling of machines is the spyware removers that are needed to remove them. In many cases the cure is worse than the disease. There are countless spyware remover programs, few of them good, some of them downright bad, and some others that engage in unscrupulous activity. I've written on this topic here. In short, I recommend Microsoft AntiSpyware (free) and Anonymizer's Anti-Spyware($19.95.) I can't recommend Lavasoft's Adaware (they fall into the unscrupulous category) or Symantec's Spyware Remover, which is just plain bad.
Kazaa is particularly troublesome with a license that is 128 on screen pages in length, contains links to other licenses not shown, and installs Cydoor, GAIN, Instafinder and My Search Toolbar. Limewire appears to be the best of the bunch with no apparent spyware installed, but it has no license at all which seems suspicious. Read Ben's roundup for the complete analysis.
This gives me an opportunity to segue into this statement about the Alexa Toolbar. Alexa is free, but it does not bundle any software AND Alexa has no agreements to be bundled with other software packages. There is only one way to get the Alexa Toolbar: visit Alexa, then download and install it. And, if you install it you won't be downloading any "bundled" mysterious software.
One of the biggest problems with spyware beyond the obvious spying and crippling of machines is the spyware removers that are needed to remove them. In many cases the cure is worse than the disease. There are countless spyware remover programs, few of them good, some of them downright bad, and some others that engage in unscrupulous activity. I've written on this topic here. In short, I recommend Microsoft AntiSpyware (free) and Anonymizer's Anti-Spyware($19.95.) I can't recommend Lavasoft's Adaware (they fall into the unscrupulous category) or Symantec's Spyware Remover, which is just plain bad.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Google Desktop Search API
Google recently released an update to their Google Desktop Search application. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, GDS allows you to search your own computer using a Google-like interface. Just type in a keyword, and see search results showing your own e-mails, word documents, pages in your Web history and more. The new version, in addition to being able to search e-mail, web history and MS Office documents, now allows you to search for Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox docs, images, video, music and PDF files.
But, by far the most interesting twist on the new release is the fact that Google is allowing developers to build applications on top of GDS and inside of GDS. Link. So for example, if you are Macromedia, and you want Google Desktop Search to be able to search shockwave files, no problem... just write a plugin. Or, let's say you are Mozilla, and you would like to allow people to search their computer from within your Mozilla browser... no problem.
This type of interface to Google Desktop Search, known as an API, opens some interesting possibilities. I'm sure Google doesn't yet know what will be built using it. And you can be just as sure that the folks up in Redmond are filling up whiteboards all across campus trying to untangle all the implications.
But, by far the most interesting twist on the new release is the fact that Google is allowing developers to build applications on top of GDS and inside of GDS. Link. So for example, if you are Macromedia, and you want Google Desktop Search to be able to search shockwave files, no problem... just write a plugin. Or, let's say you are Mozilla, and you would like to allow people to search their computer from within your Mozilla browser... no problem.
This type of interface to Google Desktop Search, known as an API, opens some interesting possibilities. I'm sure Google doesn't yet know what will be built using it. And you can be just as sure that the folks up in Redmond are filling up whiteboards all across campus trying to untangle all the implications.
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