Tag Archive for 'blekko'

Blekko launches

Ulysse Sabbag | November 2, 2010

blekko.jpg

Blekko has launched Sunday and people are wrongly wondering whether it is a Google killer.

This summer, I wrote a tiny article stating an important fact (concerning Blekko). It does not want to kill Google. It does not want to compete with Google, it is trying to improve search.

Henry Blodget, from SAI thinks it is doomed. It may be but his arguments are false.

1. For the most part, search isn’t broken.

Blekko is not meant to fix it.

2. When search IS broken, the problem is usually not Demand Media content. It’s because the question you’re asking generally isn’t well-suited to being answered by algorithmic search.

Man or Ash? People ask what they feel is the most intuitive query. Yes, they adapt their questions to algorithms but anyway, this argument is wrong.

3. Normal people haven’t the faintest idea what “slashtags” are or why they would ever want to use them.

Normal people want to ask Google: where is my grandson? If change is innovative, people will adapt.

Now, what does doomed mean? Doomed like Cuil?

———

Yet another search engine: Blekko

Ulysse Sabbag | July 21, 2010

A new search engine will be launched soon. Its name is Blekko and it wants to win. Or, maybe a little victory in one of the most competitive markets in Internet world: search.

The first thing you want to ask to Blekko’s CEO Rich Skrenta is: why? Why do you want to face Google? Well, his answer is quite simple.

So let’s just get this out of the way: there is no such thing as a Google killer. No company is going to play David to their Goliath and slay them with a well-aimed stone from a slingshot. Google is here to stay.

In my sense too, Google is here to stay. So, what is Blekko going to do? They’re going to focus on one category: categories.

With a technology called slashtags, on Blekko’s search, you can refine your search very easily: search for Apple /date and you’ll have the most recent Apple results; search for search Inception /twitter to get Twitter’s results, because Blekko is using Twitter’s API. Google can do similar search filtering yet, it’s a little bit more complicated.

Will they find success? We shall wait, and see.

———