- 01
- Jan
Of lately we have seen a number of start-up companies trying to penetrate into the search engine market. There is Chacha who uses paid researchers to provide answers to users queries. Below is the chat session that I had with a guide called SusanL on Chacha.
Status: Looking for a guide …
Status: Connected to guide: SusanL
SusanL: Welcome to ChaCha!
You: hi
SusanL: Hello Happy New Year!
You: happy new year too
SusanL: Are you looking for info on hamsters?
SusanL: Thansk
SusanL: *Thanks
You: errr ya…actually i was trying out chacha
SusanL: Is this your first time here?
You: its very innovative
You: ya
You: ok i’ll look into that url
SusanL: I’ll send a few hamster sites so you can see how it works.
SusanL: And Welcome!
You: thanks a lot
You: !!!
You: 
SusanL: Of course there is always the good old hamster dance
SusanL: 
You: that’s cool
You: ok see ya .. have a nice new year
You: bye
You: Thanks, I’m done.
Status: Session ended.
At the end of the session you get to rate the result given by the guide (I have given a Great rating for SusanL’s enthusiasm in helping out). The idea is great for casual search, it really enhances the search experience. However I’m a bit skeptical on how they would cope if the search volume traffic is high.
Then there is Powerset and Hakia that tries to use human’s natural language for searching. Powerset is currently in semi-stealth mode and therefore is not available yet. Well I got to test out Hakia with a number of searches in natural language such as ‘what is a thermometer?’ and ‘current box office movies’ and the results in my opinion was unsatisfactory. Probably I’m too used to the keywords structure of search.
Search engine Snap uses a different approach where you can actually preview how the page looks like via a screenshot before you go to the actual website. It also has the fill-in-as-you-type feature to help lookup a number of mostly used similar keywords. The problem though is the bandwidth intensity because you have to load the picture and it kinda gets old (One of the reason why people go for Google is because of its simple and clean interface) after long usage.
All these start-ups are lured by the lucrative business model of the search engines as well as providing an alternative innovative way to traditional search. Even the online behemoth Wikipedia has announced their search engine project called ‘Wikiasari‘ in December 2006. Its not unlikely that they can actually take a big slice of the market which is currently dominated by Google, Yahoo and MSN since history (Altavista, Lycos and Excite use to dominate) shows that anything is possible.