3 replies to this topic

[robertclough]

http://www.time.com/...-561499,00.html

Snippet:
There's a street fight brewing over Internet search that will make the browser wars look like thumb wrestling.

[Scottie]

Great find, Robert. Very good article. Long, but worth reading.

Or go to catalogs.google.com, and you'll discover a service that searches 6,000 mail-order catalogs for you. Some lost soul at Google literally sits there and scans catalogs.

How funny!

[qwerty]

And Amazon founder Jeff Bezos isn't done yet. Behind a smothering veil of secrecy, he's setting up a new search company in Palo Alto, Calif., called A9.com. "All I can tell you is that we're working on some interesting things that we simply cannot talk about at this point," says Bezos. The scuttlebutt is that A9 will be focused on product search, so it will compete less with Google than with Froogle — a relatively small slice of the search market but potentially the richest.

Did anyone look at A9? Talk about your veils of secrecy -- there isn't even a "coming soon". It's just a blank page with the title "www.a9.com"

[gstark]

The 'mysterious' Groxis referenced in the article - reputed to be working with A9, is interested in organizing and presenting SERs in improved more useful ways.

It is very hot at the moment as the several articles on their site attest.

Here is a quote from today's (12/15) San Jose Mercury News:
"Google, for example, judges relevance based partly on number of links pointing to a Web site, with more links implying more popularity.

But in a search for a biography, that method could lead to an out-of-date version appearing high on the list of results. A newer version could be buried within some 20,000 results, most of which wouldn't even be provided.

Groxis organizes those 20,000 results into 10 or so subcategories more helpful to researchers. Groxis' product is called Grokker 2.

For example, a search for Paris gives you a single page, with several categories titled ``History,'' ``Museums,'' ``Universities'' and ``Hotels.'' Click on ``History'' and you'll find several categories, one of which is called ``Tours.'' That, in turn lists all the historical tours of Paris. You can then drill down to the specific Web site of the tour you're interested in.

Or type in ``Java,'' and you are presented with two big categories, one related to the Java language, the other with coffee. You click on the one you want, which filters out the other."

Interesting that Paul Hawken is a founder. You may remember him as co-founder of Smith & Hawken, or as a leading futurist (co-author of Seven Tomorrows), but he is a really smart guy and information is one of his primary food groups.

BTW: on a side note, I wanted to find out more about 'Dead Peasant Insurance' policies and for the first time ever, Google failed to get me the depth of info I needed. AllTheWeb produced more than I could use. That is the first time G has failed me like that. Just one data point, but a first nonetheless.