Comments on: A Search Engine? Now That’s Novel

By: Falafulu Fisi

Falafulu Fisi — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:40:52 +0000

Well done to the entrepreneurs for their efforts but they're stupid to waste money & time developing something they claim to be different from Google (content-based search), while in fact Google is already doing it for the last 4 years or so. Content-search is based on LSI (latent semantic indexing) algorithm and it has reported here, that Google adopted LSI into their PageRank technology as an add-on, a few years ago. There are numerous variants of LSI, where they do differ only in retrieval accuracy/relevancy and also the algorithm speed. Google has moved on from using the standard LSI algorithms to more advanced variants which are more robust in their precisions & recall (ie, relevancy) capabilities. Google has an army of PhDs that do nothing all day, except continuing to improve the accuracy of existing algorithms or inventing new ones. Searchii will end up in a similar situation as iYomu local social networking site, ie, collapsed!!!

By: Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:18:10 +0000

@James – cheers for that, Jon had a great take on it

@Jon cheers for the comment – great to see we think alike! Yup SLI are a good example of leveraging a unique selling point

By: Jon Beattie

Jon Beattie — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:38:34 +0000

Absolutely. There must be a lot of viable models that they can adapt their business to quite quickly. Look at SLI Systems in Christchurch, they have carved out a really great niche in the area of internal site search, where Google is not so strong. They have a great company with strong growth.

By: James McGlinn

James McGlinn — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:42:38 +0000

You’re not alone – Jon Beattie from Marker was thinking the same thing the other day:

http://www.jonbeattie.com/searchii-new-zealands-answer-to-google/