As an addendum to our coverage of Google’s new Co-op customizable search product that launched yesterday – Google officially announced the news on their blog today with a post titled “Eureka! Your own search engine has landed!”
I wonder if Shashi Seth and R.V. Guha, the authors of the post, intended to incorporate part of the name of one of the primary existing players in the customizable search space – Eurekster – into the blog post announcing the new product. “Eureka!” is pretty damn close to “Eurekster,” although something tells me this was more of a Freudian slip rather than a conscious jab at a competitor. Either way, it’s an interesting choice of words.
Mike
R.V Guha is author of RSS and RDF – I doubt he is playing any mind games here. R.V is the force behind Netscape RSS efforts in 1996. One of the poineers in the fields organizing structural data.
Eureka simply means “I found” in ancient greek. For a search engine it’s pretty relevant.
Nobody has ever heard of Eurekster, Eureka is a word.
Mike, I was thinking the exact same thing!
And Garth, Eurekster is one of the leading players in this space – so a lot of people are familiar with it who know the space.
Surely it must be more than a freudian slip…
Both are originally from India (based on the names). It is very common in India to use Eureka on acheiving something (I rarely see it in US).
i prefer the english proclamation of “crikey!” … tsch, those pesky marketing kids know nothing ….
Eureka was excartly how I felt when I read about it here and it’s potential to turn mediarati.com into branded search engine that I had alway envisoned .
Its coincidence. I imagine the Google engineers didn’t think too hard about some obscure company’s moniker when utilizing the most recognized exclamation for discovery in the world. I’m with Garth, no one’s ever heard of them except bloggers who pay *a lot* of attention and use phrases like “leading players in this space.” I’m thinking Google engineers spend more time making web products than paying attention to other companies that might be doing something similar.
C´mon, when Archimedes discover his principle (Densite of solid bodies) while taking a bath, the leyend says that he scream Eureka! (Like a I found it).
So, I think… the expression Eureka is one of the best words that you can find…
no coincidence. I’m sure the product manager would have spent atleast a couple minutes looking on the web to see who else was in the space. Somebody on the team would have – that’s a given.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a jab a competitor. A funny one, at that.
And this little bit of reporting is one of the many reasons why bloggers kick ass.
Agree with you. Google always does its homework on companies in the space. To think they hadn’t closely looked at Eurekster would be rediculously naive. Unfortunately, Google is the new Microsoft when it comes from trying to stay away from their ever expanding “OS”.
Mike,
You’re over-worked. Get some rest.
Neither is “Indian” in origin. If ya wanna create rumors, then ya oughta be more “original”.
The usage of “Eureka” in any conversation is a little odd, let alone this little jab at a smaller, competeing company.
Eurekster? Is it me, or is the abundance of “…ster” names a sign that the end of Web 2.0 is nigh? It is already bad enough in politics; every time a scandal pops up, it is now “…gate.” Now we get it in on the Web.
The first time I glanced at the title in my news reader, I thought it was a post about Eurekster. A coincidence??? … I guess I need some rest too ..
Glen,
Shashi Seth and R.V. Guha are definately Indian names. I have lived 30 years in India and I am sure about this.
They definitely are Indian. For those of you who don’t know Shashi Seth was nominated to be the “Indian of the Year” for 2005 and recently proclaimed by the Vice President of India to be “the prodigal son of India.” He founded the eBay platform and has an amazing career. Not surprising that when you get two such amazing individuals – Shashi and R.V. Guha (who somebody else pointed out is not only father of RSS, RDF and co-founder of epinions and an amazing researcher) – that they are going to build something so disruptive – this Google Platform play is going to seal the dominance that Google has on the search and ad space, and will make the competition small time players.
Here is Sashi Seth’s background: http://www.hind..._achivers/7.htm
and here is R.V. Guha’s profile: http://www.guha.com/cv.html
I doubt is was a jab. I’m a “mild” follower of “this space” and I never heard of them. That prob’ly because I’ve been building the index for Crikeystr, a vertical search of Google Press Releases.
Pretty weird that a product manager for a new Google product doesn’t know who the existing players in the space are. I mean they had to do *some* competitive research right?
Someone tell me I’m right….?
Mr. Dempsey, I agree with you on that Crikeystr and Eurekster are apples and oranges re “this space” hence your answer, but wanted to shed light on that you and others have probably used Eurekster without even knowing it. For example, check out the green buzzcloud (called a swicki) on the right upper fold on this page. The bigger words are the popular keywords from the TC search audience. Lockergnome, Popsci.com, and many thousands of publishers large and small use the Eurekster technology. They were the first to hit the community/personalized space years ago actually. Go make a swicki – you’ll love it – try building a shopping, wine, tech, or maybe even a Freudian slip swicki (ha), you’ll see how fast it learns. (I worked at Eurekster for a long time and forever a big fan – luv ya!
).
Mike,
How come you did not think about Eureka vaccum cleaners.
I am puzzled to know people really do not know what Eureka means. It is funny …how poor american education system is…People think odd when you utter “Eureka”.
In India, even the uneducated know what Eureka means.
It’s not about the meaning of the word, but a direct hit at the company/product that already exists and does that exactly far better: eurekster.com. It’s a bit unusual however to have zealot programmers develope competition-obsessions.
And to speculate further, on a tiny scale, this can develop similar to the youtube vs. google video thingy, with another failed google product taking over an established/mature market share.
Archemedes called out “Eureka” when he jumped out of his bath, having just noticed that you can use water displacement to measure volume. It meant, as somebody has noted, “I have found” or “discovered”.
Perhaps somebody at Google thought up the word in the bath.
Normally its Google (Googol) that gets the word wrong.
Hans (and Mike) is right – all prod mgrs know the names of the competition in their space. This is a jab, although hardly an evil one.
Indian, stop being a troll by trying to turn this into an “American vs Indian education system” flame. There are other boards for that…
morons
Eureka! i’ve struck gold
Eureka! you’ve now got your own search engine
Eureka is an appropriate term , i’m guess the Sydney Australia Google office developed the th slogan.
to put it another perspective
what company would advertise a competing product Eurekster?