Life is not easy for search engine startups. FIrst, it’s hard to create something that doesn’t fall flat against Google. Too much hype (Google Killer!), whether the company drives it or not, inevitably leads to disappointment.
Cuil is walking dead, for example, and Wikia Search is just dead. Other ambitious projects like SearchMe are dealing with tepid user enthusiasm, and Wolfram Alpha’s over-hype has cost it credibility.
Any search engine startup with a shred of common sense wouldn’t want to create a lot of hype about itself before launching. There are too many dead bodies lying around to prove how badly that strategy works.
But on the other hand: ambitious startups need to hire talented engineers, and they need lots of money. Crawling and indexing the web is expensive and requires thousands of servers. Those servers aren’t free. So there needs to be at least a little awareness of the startup out there for hiring and fundraising purposes.
New search engine startup Blekko has been trying to figure out exactly where pre-launch press should begin and end. They’ve said very little up to now and haven’t made any big promises at all. We first covered them in early 2008, and have subsequently noted some high profile investors that have put money into the project.
But that’s it. The company has said clearly that they don’t want press, and most bloggers and other journalists have respected that. Not only that, all their website has on it is a cute paper bag puppet. No ridiculous promises of anything at all. We had to beg them just to get a logo (the puppet looked absurd as their logo in CrunchBase).
So why the slight buzz yesterday and today? They’re preparing to launch later this year and they are raising more money to ramp up. They’re starting to show people a little more of the product. We’re impressed. As are others.
Is Blekko a Google killer? I don’t think so. And the company isn’t claiming that, either. But I do think they have a really cool search product that a lot of people are going to love. I look forward to writing about it when they prepare to launch.
But until then we’re going to give them the privacy they’ve requested to fully bake the product. Because the last thing we need is another over-hyped pre-launch search engine that’s called a failure just because they aren’t a Google slayer a week after launch.
there will be a google killer eventually. there has to be a group of smart phd guys in their garage right now working on it. while google search is good i still see lots of areas they can improve in. by improve i am not referring to the real time crap that i am hearing so much about.
it’s not a google killer. it’s just a cool new startup. they aren’t saying anything about killing anything, so we shouldn’t be either.
Michael, you are too much of a tease!
If it is not a Google killer, is it at least a Wolfram killer? Bing killer? Twitter search killer? Or is it just one more of the many new search engines that have cropped up recently?
if it isn’t some new innovation then it has to kill something to gain market share.
Funny. Why does every new technology have to kill something. Why can’t two competing technologies exist without killing other? I for one haven’t evolved either. The first thing I thought of when I heard about google wave was twitter killer. It must be our fascination with seeing something going down in flames. Not good, but any title with deadpool in it is a must read for me…
@Michael,
Why don’t you check out Yauba, instead of these vapourwares…
Michael said…
ambitious startups need to hire talented engineers
Mike, startups need to hire PhD guys who can invent original idea/s that has/have never been done before. That’s how game changer started (Brin & Page anyone?). Well, Facebook is no a game changer (technologically) in a sense of what game changer is, but I think it is a good application to develop, since millions of users want it. One can say that McDonald restaurant is a game changer (in the sense that it has millions of diners want to go there), but not necessary a revolutionary idea.
I see lots of startups that you frequently covered here at TC, which are actually not really revolutionary in a sense of my McDonald example (ie, lots of people want to use those apps, but not really new thing at all or otherwise we should call McDonald a cutting-edge company simply because there are millions choose to buy their products). When I read a startup coverage here at TC, I can immediately think of what’s behind the application (algorithms/technology-wise), even if I am not correct in my assumption/s,I am pretty much sure that the techniques that I think of (based on what I have seen in the computing literatures) are applicable or can be superior to the technology behind those startups. I take my hat off to startup founders, but my point here is that to be competitive in a crowded software market of today, you need people with brains (not necessarily the founders themselves but founders need to hire those brains), because they’re the potential for game changer. Ok, fine you need hackers as Paul Graham advocates for, but mind you that hackers don’t invent anything original in the context that something that scientists around the world have never thought of). Here is a quote from the Head of Computer Science Department at University of Auckland , New Zealand which I have cut & pasted from our local newspaper:
Prof. John Hosking quote:
———————
John Hosking, professor of applied computer science at the university and a driving forces behind Extenda, says one problem is that senior
technology staff in New Zealand businesses tend not to have post-graduate or often even degree qualifications. As a result, the companies they work for, while often successful at selling a single
idea, can struggle when it comes to continuing to grow through innovation.
“Although they [the technology managers] are bright and innovative, they haven’t been exposed to research methods as you would through doing a masters or PhD,” he says.
“We’d like to open their eyes to what research can do to make companies grow quicker. Obviously we’d be interested in helping them do that
research – we’re quite open about that – but the name of the game is to raise a research culture within their companies, and allow them to grow
quicker, be more innovative and avoid this one-product wonder trap that
they get into.”
And this is fact. You can develop something that has never been available before (perhaps like Youtube, Twitter, etc,…) but they’re not going to survive long term in terms of innovations & competitiveness, which is exactly what Prof. Hosking meant in his comment. If you want to question what do I mean about that, then you should immediately think about Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google (still a young company but with continual innovations) and many other high tech companies, etc. They have been there for many decades and why they are still here? Think about it. The core mentality in those software titans is recruiting people with brains. The brains are the engine that keeps these companies competitive in the long run, since they’re not in the one-product wonder trap as Prof. Hosking mentioned.
I think that startups and whoever their financial backers are, should be encouraged to link up with various University R&D groups, just so that they know what is revolutionary in terms of cutting-edge technology. Why I encourage this. I do encourage startup founders should do this, since you can work on something you thought its revolutionary, but actually the founders don’t know that there is a better way (or more efficient or accurate) of doing it. They also don’t know that these methods have already been researched & published which eluded them, since they are not research-oriented types of people. WHY is it necessary? Because, a startup can develop something and achieve a market dominance immediately, but that is not a sure guarantee that this dominance will prolong. If you want example from a coverage here at TC lately? Yes, you covered Siri recently and from what I have seen in research publications, Siri is doing something that I have only seen in research only but not commercial. They (Siri) is a potential game changer and they’re different from other similar startups that you have covered here at TC. The other startups in the same domain as Siri (to the best of my understanding) are like the one that Prof. Hosking described in his comment, ie,
Although they [the technology managers] are bright and innovative, they haven’t been exposed to research methods as you would through doing a masters or PhD,
So, in my opinion , startup founders should be encouraged to seek help from the research communities early on, because they may be developing something they think its original but unbeknown to them that researchers have already been done on such techniques/methods and made available publicly in research journals that potentially anyone could stumble upon those concepts/technologies and develop them into a competing commercial applications that may have the capability to kill those startups.
Getting PhDs in the first place (or consult with those who are doing original researches at various tertiary institutions) is a potential winner. This is how the big software titans survive in the long term, since they (their own researchers) scan of what’s hot and what’s the potential game changer idea that frequently come up in research journals and attempt (on many occasions successfully) to recruited them. That’s why they have been there for many years because of their army of PhDs.
I’ll give an example. This PhD dude (Te-Ming Huang) who did his PhD here at University of Auckland here in New Zealand, went to Berkeley for a conference to present his paper there and an agent from Microsoft recruited him on the spot after his presentation. He came back to New Zealand to submit his PhD, but left shortly after to join the US Microsoft research. He has moved to Inrix, but Te-Ming Huang was recruited by Microsoft, because whoever at Microsoft Research did the recruitment already read Te-Ming Huang’s paper on the topic of semi-supervised learning (which is still relatively new topic), so they found out the he was to present a paper on the topic at a conference in the US, but perhaps it was a coincident some Microsoft researchers were participating as well in the same event. I know this because I talked with Te-Ming Huang’s advisor at the engineering robotics department recently .It is obvious that Microsoft (and others) do their recruitment in this way, ie, they have already read someone’s paper in some journals and decide to recruit someone in that specific domain (if possible), then if not approach the authors of those papers to see if they’re keen to join Microsoft Research. So, I believe that startup founders should hook up with Univesity R&Ds even for informal discussions so it ensure that they will get access to knowledge of what’s hot and what’s not.
@silicon valley dropout: I disagree with you. real time search is the next thing and Larry Page has said that too. Search should be filtered according to time too.I believe Twitter works best as a product under Google (or any search engine) and not a company as is being touted and hyped as. you can read my post about it here http://oonwoye....-save-humanity/
real time doesnt exist. as soon as you pushes something out it is already late. i cant recalled that i ever needed a search to be “real time” or i would be in dire straits. this whole real time concept is nothing more then a hyped up buzz word concept just like all those web 2.0 crap. see this post i just now posted already old news.
I think Yahoo should buy Blekko or another Search engine, just to build up a brand. Yahoo built up google, so it should be able to do the same with another search engine.
we’ll let you know in 3 months
I just wanted to leave a comment cause I’m demostrating FB Connect
thanks for the heads up…
The best way to launch a search engine is to call it anything but “search engine”.
… call it decision engine instead
Arrington must understand that posts like this do nothing but build up the hype machine. The only way to not build up hype, simply, is not write about it at all. Not even on Twitter.
bingo! was waiting for that comment. see para 4. there’s a reason for everything.
Oh! Cool, so you were giving blekko a hand! I wish I had a start-up and you’d write about it like this…
That is nice of you.
I thought any publicity is good so long they can spell your name right!
Interesting mascot.
That silence from Blekko is really going to build up the anticipation…not.
that’s the point. they don’t want anticipation.
My bad.
I though they were trying to be clever, and create some sort of of an aura of mystique around the product by staying silent.
“Blekko” sounds like an expletive from MAD magazine, or some kind of bodily secretion.
Twibeo.com is a complete rip-off of Twitter. Their theme and tagline is “inspired” from Twitter. Their logo is stolen from HootSuite. Their admins are one heck of a$$holes, who delete users’ posts.
I’m making a new search engine. Keep it quiet.
Oh crap, I posted about it on TC! Bugger, now it’s doomed! Doomed, I say!
It was going to kill Google and everything! What a world, what a world.
Stop looking for google killer, and start asking what are your needs.
Searching the web is frustrating, either with Google or any of the above mentioned search engines.
The fact is that Google and Yahoo provides the most rellevant results, the problem is the way the results are presented !
As a surfer I don’t care if I got 17,096,889 results, it just makes me confused.
@Qwiji (http://www.qwiji.com) we think that the best way to get the results is – to watch the results them selves.
For example if I search for Eminem videos, the best thing is to instantly watch the most relevant clips and flip through them if I wish (http://bit.ly/5aTNu)
It isn’t true that these guys are trying to stay very quiet. One of the founders, last week, wrote an ill-advised blog post about how Google keeps copying small search companies each and every time they innovate. This got wide attention and, to me, raised their profile considerably. I am now expecting a very serious product.
I do agree that “Google killer” tag will be an overkill for any search startups. However, I do believe that there are potential startups that can challenge Google in many different ways. Like, the hot real-time search engine http://tinyurl.com/aff235 or http://www.twitter.com .. Companies like this has greater potential to challenge Google and I hope some consolidation might happen soon.
@spotrunhelp
You are right. Google is managing to stay on top by innovating AND by copying what smaller engines do. I won’t be surprised if Sergey’s recently-assembled team of engineers and execs tries to copy the innovations in Bing — yes, they are innovations. There are things that I can do on Bing that I’ve never been able to do on Google.
Also, is Google Wave an innovation? Certainly over regular email.
I wish I had a start-up and you’d write about it like this…
that’s the point. they don’t want anticipation.
google can be crushed – it’s terrible – Bing and Yahoo are virtually the same results – just check em – nobody mentions they’re the same because google has all the traffic
all the results are from high pr or trusted (what a joke) sites – real time search – what the heck it that – the same results from 1000 different blogs and link sites like twittless and stumbleover
google will kill itself – virtualy all it’s advertisers are “trusted sites” – all are networked with many other sites in the same category (usually all owned by the same person (or business) – in any other industry except search this would be conflict of interest – anyway now usually only one or two at most paid results show up at top off google – these paid results virtually all already have pr and rank in google organically – so why buy advertising – simply – dogpile and others show more paid links from google and people click them – There basicaly are no more search engines – all there is is google and it’s affiliates – Bing bought Yahoo so there goes Yahoo – ask ect – DMOZ never updates
what will the Google Killer do – Rank websites – real websites with the content on the domain – make offlinks IRREVELANT – Inbound links MORE IRREVELANT – if more than 20% of uniq ip surfers after say 200 hits click “link is bad result” kill the domain – For Good
a good example of a huge site with all content on domain and no traffic – http://celebsfamous.com – this is a nude celebs site – and it’s mine – probably people will say this is spam and remove it or possibly not – anyway I can’t pay webhosting so the site will be gone soon anyway – but if you want an example of search engine failure this is it
nude celebs is one of the most popular search terms – just Google it and compare what comes up with mine – comapre the content and lack of – compare the blind links and lack of – compare what is being advertised – (a lot of adult sites are riping people off really bad)
anyway do this and you will see that my site has all the content on the domain – it’s really free – there are no blind links and no lies
am I implying the other sites lie – No I saying it outright
search is supposed to provide good results to the surfers – not spam for seo guys
I hate Google
forgot to mention – where to twittelss and stumbleover get most of their traffic – Google – where the same results show up 800 times on differtnt twitts and stumbleovers
there is no more level playing field – want a great search engine – bring back Yahoo or Altavista or any other major player before there was PR AND ADD a “BAD RESULT” link Next To Each Result – When 20% click it – the spam is DEAD