GenieKnows is a division of IT Interactive Services Inc., a privately owned vertical search engine company based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Like many internet search engines, its revenue model centers on an online advertising platform and B2B transactions. It focuses on a set of niche search markets, or verticals, including health search, video games search, and local business directory search[1].
GenieKnows uses algorithms to download, assess, and categorize web pages and index them for later matching with web search queries.
In 2005, GenieKnows entered the search engine market with a local business directory search engine[2]. Targeting only the United States in its beta release, the local search engine is similar to Google Maps but uses the proprietary GeoRank algorithm to associate potentially uncategorized web pages containing addresses with businesses listed in an internet Yellow Pages directory by extracting addresses and geocoding these to identify geographic coordinates for which it associates the web page[3].
On February 29 2008 GenieKnows Local was launched as a completely revised local search engine extending beyond the 100 most populous US cities covered in its beta release. The local search engine utilizes processed municipal business data, road network data, national park data, and geocoding technology to provide localized search results ranked according to a business's relevance to a user's web query. As of the February 2008 release, the engine covers over 90% of Canadian and US municipalities with populations above 1000 residents.
According to SEO and search marketing expert Jim Hedger, GenieKnows' strongest, most unique and important product is its local search engine.[4]
GenieKnows entered the vertical search market in 2006 with a vertical search engine for video games-related web pages and another for health-related web pages.
Web pages often describe or discuss a particular topic. In information retrieval and machine learning literature, classification algorithms have been used to automatically identify the subject matter of a web page. GenieKnows uses such algorithms as a focused crawler to download web pages, identify pages that are on topic with the vertical, and index and save those pages.
The result is a search engine that contains only web pages that are on a given topic, tailoring to a niche market of web users who have an interest in a given topic, so all pages returned for a query will be on topic with the vertical being used. For revenue generation, the engine displays advertisements beside the search results from a network of advertisers where it receives pay per click. GenieKnows is collaborating with Yahoo! to display targeted, contextualized advertisements to a targeted market of users.[5]
In February 2008, GenieKnows added online community functionality to its vertical search engine. Users sharing interest in a topic can communicate and contribute content to the site in a manner similar, but on a smaller scale, to those of Facebook, and Yahoo.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Forestle
Forestle is a ecologically inspired search engine created by Christian Kroll, Wittenberg, Germany, in 2008. Forestle is a website for finding all kinds of information on the internet; Forestle helps to save the rain forest and aims to reduce CO2 emissions. It also offers special features, for example a preview of the websites found during a search.
Forestle saves 0.1 square meters (about 0.12 square yards) of rain forest per search event. It guarantees to donate 90% of its advertisement revenue to the Adopt an Acre program of is partner organization The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy uses these donations by Forestle to sustain rain forests. As of December 9, 2009, about 2,910,000 square meters of rain forest have been saved [1]. As of November 20,2010 about 9,250,000 square meters have been saved.
A Forestle search is also essentially CO2-neutral, as Forestle.org offsets the carbon-dioxide emissions caused by electricity consumed by all Forestle servers, the network infrastructure as well as the computers of each user by purchasing an equivalent amount of renewable energy certificates [2]. The certificates are purchased from a part of the 10% of revenue left after conserving rain forest. This makes Forestle one of the few web search sites that are green certified. Forestle thus offers a simple alternative form of searching the web in an eco-friendly way.
The number of search requests on Forestle.org continues to increase significantly [1]: Within two months, it increased more than sixfold from about 4,000 per day on average in December 2008 to more than 24,000 per day in February 2009. The report about Forestle in a major German newspaper [3] end of February 2009 transiently boosted the number of search events on Forestle.org within a week (3rd of March 2009) close to its all-time maximum [4]. As of December 2009, the number of search events exceeds 200,000 per day.
The degree of impact of Forestle.org and similar kinds of 'green' search engines is discussed; the (now removed) note on Forestle to not click on advertisements to 'help' achieving larger advertisement revenues was particularly criticized [5].
The site pioneers a thumbnail website preview for all search results. Moreover, it offers a search with so-called indicators, for instance, one may directly search for 'Basic Income' on Wikipedia (instead of the entire WWW) by typing 'Wikipedia::Basic Income' [6]. The language chosen for indicator search is automatically associated, so a search on the US web site http://us.Forestle.org or on the British web site http://uk.Forestle.org leads to a search on English Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org and a search on the German web site http://de.Forestle.org (or on the Austrian Website http://at.Forestle.org) leads a search on German Wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org. Forestle also provides several browser plugins, can be added to iGoogle and is available in English and German (full versions) as well as in Spanish and Dutch (details partially in English) .
On November 27, 2009, Forestle received the Utopia Award [7] as an exemplary organisation enabling us to live more sustainably. The Jury emphasizes that Forestle "offers a simple and strong possibility to contribute to protect existing rain forest through the use of an everyday [...] service" and that "thereby Forestle unfolds a high effectiveness and sharpens the consumers' sense for the impact of consumer behavior" [8].
Forestle was associated to Google until Google revoked the site's search functionality after four days due to a dispute over whether their terms of service were being broken [9]. Forestle.org states that google did not actually give reasons for stopping the association [10]. At the time, Forestle posted a message on their website stating that Google had contacted them and explained the reason for banning Forestle from using their Google Custom Search[9]. The action by google to not further support Forestle immediately drew international attention [11] [12] . Details about the conflict between Google and Forestle are debated [13]. Forestle is now associated with Yahoo [14].
Forestle saves 0.1 square meters (about 0.12 square yards) of rain forest per search event. It guarantees to donate 90% of its advertisement revenue to the Adopt an Acre program of is partner organization The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy uses these donations by Forestle to sustain rain forests. As of December 9, 2009, about 2,910,000 square meters of rain forest have been saved [1]. As of November 20,2010 about 9,250,000 square meters have been saved.
A Forestle search is also essentially CO2-neutral, as Forestle.org offsets the carbon-dioxide emissions caused by electricity consumed by all Forestle servers, the network infrastructure as well as the computers of each user by purchasing an equivalent amount of renewable energy certificates [2]. The certificates are purchased from a part of the 10% of revenue left after conserving rain forest. This makes Forestle one of the few web search sites that are green certified. Forestle thus offers a simple alternative form of searching the web in an eco-friendly way.
The number of search requests on Forestle.org continues to increase significantly [1]: Within two months, it increased more than sixfold from about 4,000 per day on average in December 2008 to more than 24,000 per day in February 2009. The report about Forestle in a major German newspaper [3] end of February 2009 transiently boosted the number of search events on Forestle.org within a week (3rd of March 2009) close to its all-time maximum [4]. As of December 2009, the number of search events exceeds 200,000 per day.
The degree of impact of Forestle.org and similar kinds of 'green' search engines is discussed; the (now removed) note on Forestle to not click on advertisements to 'help' achieving larger advertisement revenues was particularly criticized [5].
The site pioneers a thumbnail website preview for all search results. Moreover, it offers a search with so-called indicators, for instance, one may directly search for 'Basic Income' on Wikipedia (instead of the entire WWW) by typing 'Wikipedia::Basic Income' [6]. The language chosen for indicator search is automatically associated, so a search on the US web site http://us.Forestle.org or on the British web site http://uk.Forestle.org leads to a search on English Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org and a search on the German web site http://de.Forestle.org (or on the Austrian Website http://at.Forestle.org) leads a search on German Wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org. Forestle also provides several browser plugins, can be added to iGoogle and is available in English and German (full versions) as well as in Spanish and Dutch (details partially in English) .
On November 27, 2009, Forestle received the Utopia Award [7] as an exemplary organisation enabling us to live more sustainably. The Jury emphasizes that Forestle "offers a simple and strong possibility to contribute to protect existing rain forest through the use of an everyday [...] service" and that "thereby Forestle unfolds a high effectiveness and sharpens the consumers' sense for the impact of consumer behavior" [8].
Forestle was associated to Google until Google revoked the site's search functionality after four days due to a dispute over whether their terms of service were being broken [9]. Forestle.org states that google did not actually give reasons for stopping the association [10]. At the time, Forestle posted a message on their website stating that Google had contacted them and explained the reason for banning Forestle from using their Google Custom Search[9]. The action by google to not further support Forestle immediately drew international attention [11] [12] . Details about the conflict between Google and Forestle are debated [13]. Forestle is now associated with Yahoo [14].
Excite
Excite is an Internet portal, and as one of the major "dotcom" "portals" of the 1990s (along with Yahoo!, Lycos and Netscape), it was once one of the most recognized brands on the Internet. Today it offers a variety of services, including search, web-based email, instant messaging, stock quotes, and a customizable user homepage. The content is collated from over 100 different sources. Excite.com has also been said to be building an entirely rock and roll based search engine, following specialized search engines like Disinfo, with their stated aim being to retrieve results faster.[1]
Excite was founded as Architext in 1994 by Graham Spencer, Joe Kraus, Mark Van Haren, Ryan McIntyre, Ben Lutch and Martin Reinfried, who were all students at Stanford University. In July 1994 International Data Group paid them $100,000 to develop an online service. In January 1995, Vinod Khosla (himself a former Stanford student), a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, arranged a $250,000 first round backing for the project with $1.5 million in ten months. Soon thereafter, Geoff Yang of Institutional Venture Partners brought in an additional $1.5 million in financing, and Excite was formally launched in December 1995.
In January 1996, George Bell joined Excite as its Chief Executive Officer. Excite also bought two search engines (Magellan and WebCrawler), and signed exclusive distribution agreements with Netscape, Microsoft, Apple, and other companies. On April 4, 1996, Excite went public with an initial offering of two million shares. In June 1997, Intuit, maker of Quicken and TurboTax. purchased a 19% stake in Excite and finalized a seven-year partnership deal.
On October 16, 1997, Excite purchased Netbot, a comparison shopping service. At the same time Intuit announced the launch of Excite Business & Investing. Later that year a deal was finalized with Ticketmaster to provide direct online ticketing.
On March 31 1998, Excite reported a net loss of approximately $30.2 million and according to its first quarter report it only had enough available capital to meet obligations through December. [2] In December 1998, Yahoo! was in negotiations to purchase Excite for $5.5 billion to $6 billion. However, prompted by Kleiner Perkins, @Home Network's Chairman and CEO, Thomas Jermoluk met with Excite’s chairman and CEO George Bell on December 19, and Excite was subsequently acquired by @Home Network, on January 19, 1999.
Later in 1999, two graduate students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, decided that Google, the search engine they had developed, was taking up time they should have been using to study. They went to Bell and offered it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer, and later threw Vinod Khosla, one of Excite's venture capitalists, out of his office after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. Excite's refusal to buy what became a $180 billion company by 2010 has been called one of the dumbest business decisions ever.[3]
The $6.7 billion merger of Excite and @Home became one of the largest mergers of two Internet companies ever; it combined @Home's high speed internet services and existing portal with Excite’s search engine and portal. The combined company also moved towards personalized web portal content.[citation needed]
The new company became "Excite@Home", though the stock symbol and the company's name in regulatory filing records remained as "At Home Corporation" (ATHM). Six months after the merger, Tom Jermoluk stepped down as CEO of Excite@Home and Excite’s George Bell, who was the President of the Excite division of @Home after the merger, became the new CEO of combined Excite@Home. Jermoluk remained Chairman of the Board.
Following the merger, the Excite division purchased iMall, as well as online greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts. Excite also acquired photo-sharing company Webshots. Excite furthermore paid for sponsorship of Infiniti Indy car driver Eddie Cheever, Jr., through the 2000 and 2001 racing seasons. However, the merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations. Online advertising revenue plummeted, while cable network ISP revenue continued to grow. On September 21, 2000, after stock value had dropped 90%, George Bell announced plans to step down as CEO within six months. On April 23, 2001, Excite@Home announced Patti S. Hart, the former CEO of Telocity, would become its third CEO in three years. In the same announcement, George Bell resigned and left the company completely. The company also reported first-quarter net loss of $61.6 million, compared with a loss of $4.6 million in the same period the prior year.
On June 11, 2001, Excite@Home announced that it had raised $100 million in financing from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. Part of the deal was that the loan was repayable immediately if Excite@Home stock was delisted by Nasdaq. The loan, structured as a note convertible into shares of Excite, had an interest rate of zero. By August 20 of that year, Excite@Home had replaced its auditors Ernst & Young with PricewaterhouseCoopers. This triggered a demand from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co for the immediate repayment of $50 million in debt. Furthermore, Cox Cable and Comcast announced that they would separate from Excite@Home by the first quarter of 2002.
On September 13, 2001, Excite@Home sold Blue Mountain Arts to American Greetings for less than 5% of what it had paid less than two years earlier. On October 1, 2001, Excite@Home filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. The company's remaining 1,350 employees were laid off over the following months. As part of the agreement, @Home's national high-speed fiber network access would be sold back to AT&T. At Home Liquidating Trust became the successor company to Excite@Home, charged with the sale of all assets of the former company.
At the end of 2001, the Webshots assets were purchased by the company's founders for $2.4 million in cash from the Bankruptcy Court.
[edit] Excite Network
During the collapse of Excite@Home, Irvington, New York–based iWon.com had quietly started designing a new, yet familiar, Excite website hoping that it could acquire the Excite.com domain name and brand in the course of the bankruptcy proceedings. IWon.com made a joint bid with Seattle's InfoSpace to purchase the domain and brand. On November 28, the court accepted the bid and gave iWon less than three weeks to launch a new Excite portal. Bill Daugherty, iWon's founder and then co-chief executive at the time told The New York Times, "I feel like a guy who lived through a hurricane, got pounded and pounded and managed to survive when everyone else was destroyed. Suddenly you walk outside and because of the storm you have beachfront property. That's what Excite is to us."
On December 16, 2001, iWon launched the new Excite portal and transferred millions of Excite users to its new home. iWon changed its corporate name to Excite Network, and continued to operate Excite, iWon, and a third portal, MyWay. Outside of the United States, Excite Italia took control of portals in UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and Austria. Infospace, for its part, owned and operated the web search function on Excite. This proved to be a short-sighted arrangement as searching became big business on the Internet in the ensuing years.
[edit] Freelane by Excite
Historical logo of the no-cost Excite FreeLane Internet service.
In a bid to compete against Internet Service Providers like NetZero and Juno Online, which offered free or low-cost dial-up access in the United States, Excite started offering its own "no-pay" service for private customers by partnering with 1stUp.com to create FreeLane by Excite: 1stUp would allow Excite customers to download software in order for them to be able log-on to the Internet. The software would then rotate a series of sponsored banner advertisements on the user's computer while they surfed the Internet. 1stUp.com soon went out of business, and Excite switched to another partner named WorldShare, rebranding Freelane as FreeLane version 2.0. As of March 1, 2001 Freelane was discontinued.[4]
[edit] Excite Tickets Portal
Excite.com features a number of domains that cater to different services. Their Events.Excite.Com portal is essentially a ticket selling website where users can buy tickets and search through thousands of events and venues. The powerful search engine capabilities of the Excite server are utilized on this website to help the user search for tickets and events.
[edit] Excite Degrees Portal
Recently Excite.com has also started an education portal that can be used by people to search for and apply for different degrees and online courses. The Excite Degrees portal features a list of thousands of educational institutes across America for prospective students to browse through and apply at.
Excite was founded as Architext in 1994 by Graham Spencer, Joe Kraus, Mark Van Haren, Ryan McIntyre, Ben Lutch and Martin Reinfried, who were all students at Stanford University. In July 1994 International Data Group paid them $100,000 to develop an online service. In January 1995, Vinod Khosla (himself a former Stanford student), a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, arranged a $250,000 first round backing for the project with $1.5 million in ten months. Soon thereafter, Geoff Yang of Institutional Venture Partners brought in an additional $1.5 million in financing, and Excite was formally launched in December 1995.
In January 1996, George Bell joined Excite as its Chief Executive Officer. Excite also bought two search engines (Magellan and WebCrawler), and signed exclusive distribution agreements with Netscape, Microsoft, Apple, and other companies. On April 4, 1996, Excite went public with an initial offering of two million shares. In June 1997, Intuit, maker of Quicken and TurboTax. purchased a 19% stake in Excite and finalized a seven-year partnership deal.
On October 16, 1997, Excite purchased Netbot, a comparison shopping service. At the same time Intuit announced the launch of Excite Business & Investing. Later that year a deal was finalized with Ticketmaster to provide direct online ticketing.
On March 31 1998, Excite reported a net loss of approximately $30.2 million and according to its first quarter report it only had enough available capital to meet obligations through December. [2] In December 1998, Yahoo! was in negotiations to purchase Excite for $5.5 billion to $6 billion. However, prompted by Kleiner Perkins, @Home Network's Chairman and CEO, Thomas Jermoluk met with Excite’s chairman and CEO George Bell on December 19, and Excite was subsequently acquired by @Home Network, on January 19, 1999.
Later in 1999, two graduate students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, decided that Google, the search engine they had developed, was taking up time they should have been using to study. They went to Bell and offered it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer, and later threw Vinod Khosla, one of Excite's venture capitalists, out of his office after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. Excite's refusal to buy what became a $180 billion company by 2010 has been called one of the dumbest business decisions ever.[3]
The $6.7 billion merger of Excite and @Home became one of the largest mergers of two Internet companies ever; it combined @Home's high speed internet services and existing portal with Excite’s search engine and portal. The combined company also moved towards personalized web portal content.[citation needed]
The new company became "Excite@Home", though the stock symbol and the company's name in regulatory filing records remained as "At Home Corporation" (ATHM). Six months after the merger, Tom Jermoluk stepped down as CEO of Excite@Home and Excite’s George Bell, who was the President of the Excite division of @Home after the merger, became the new CEO of combined Excite@Home. Jermoluk remained Chairman of the Board.
Following the merger, the Excite division purchased iMall, as well as online greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts. Excite also acquired photo-sharing company Webshots. Excite furthermore paid for sponsorship of Infiniti Indy car driver Eddie Cheever, Jr., through the 2000 and 2001 racing seasons. However, the merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations. Online advertising revenue plummeted, while cable network ISP revenue continued to grow. On September 21, 2000, after stock value had dropped 90%, George Bell announced plans to step down as CEO within six months. On April 23, 2001, Excite@Home announced Patti S. Hart, the former CEO of Telocity, would become its third CEO in three years. In the same announcement, George Bell resigned and left the company completely. The company also reported first-quarter net loss of $61.6 million, compared with a loss of $4.6 million in the same period the prior year.
On June 11, 2001, Excite@Home announced that it had raised $100 million in financing from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. Part of the deal was that the loan was repayable immediately if Excite@Home stock was delisted by Nasdaq. The loan, structured as a note convertible into shares of Excite, had an interest rate of zero. By August 20 of that year, Excite@Home had replaced its auditors Ernst & Young with PricewaterhouseCoopers. This triggered a demand from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co for the immediate repayment of $50 million in debt. Furthermore, Cox Cable and Comcast announced that they would separate from Excite@Home by the first quarter of 2002.
On September 13, 2001, Excite@Home sold Blue Mountain Arts to American Greetings for less than 5% of what it had paid less than two years earlier. On October 1, 2001, Excite@Home filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. The company's remaining 1,350 employees were laid off over the following months. As part of the agreement, @Home's national high-speed fiber network access would be sold back to AT&T. At Home Liquidating Trust became the successor company to Excite@Home, charged with the sale of all assets of the former company.
At the end of 2001, the Webshots assets were purchased by the company's founders for $2.4 million in cash from the Bankruptcy Court.
[edit] Excite Network
During the collapse of Excite@Home, Irvington, New York–based iWon.com had quietly started designing a new, yet familiar, Excite website hoping that it could acquire the Excite.com domain name and brand in the course of the bankruptcy proceedings. IWon.com made a joint bid with Seattle's InfoSpace to purchase the domain and brand. On November 28, the court accepted the bid and gave iWon less than three weeks to launch a new Excite portal. Bill Daugherty, iWon's founder and then co-chief executive at the time told The New York Times, "I feel like a guy who lived through a hurricane, got pounded and pounded and managed to survive when everyone else was destroyed. Suddenly you walk outside and because of the storm you have beachfront property. That's what Excite is to us."
On December 16, 2001, iWon launched the new Excite portal and transferred millions of Excite users to its new home. iWon changed its corporate name to Excite Network, and continued to operate Excite, iWon, and a third portal, MyWay. Outside of the United States, Excite Italia took control of portals in UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and Austria. Infospace, for its part, owned and operated the web search function on Excite. This proved to be a short-sighted arrangement as searching became big business on the Internet in the ensuing years.
[edit] Freelane by Excite
Historical logo of the no-cost Excite FreeLane Internet service.
In a bid to compete against Internet Service Providers like NetZero and Juno Online, which offered free or low-cost dial-up access in the United States, Excite started offering its own "no-pay" service for private customers by partnering with 1stUp.com to create FreeLane by Excite: 1stUp would allow Excite customers to download software in order for them to be able log-on to the Internet. The software would then rotate a series of sponsored banner advertisements on the user's computer while they surfed the Internet. 1stUp.com soon went out of business, and Excite switched to another partner named WorldShare, rebranding Freelane as FreeLane version 2.0. As of March 1, 2001 Freelane was discontinued.[4]
[edit] Excite Tickets Portal
Excite.com features a number of domains that cater to different services. Their Events.Excite.Com portal is essentially a ticket selling website where users can buy tickets and search through thousands of events and venues. The powerful search engine capabilities of the Excite server are utilized on this website to help the user search for tickets and events.
[edit] Excite Degrees Portal
Recently Excite.com has also started an education portal that can be used by people to search for and apply for different degrees and online courses. The Excite Degrees portal features a list of thousands of educational institutes across America for prospective students to browse through and apply at.
Exalead
Exalead is a software company that provides search platforms and search-based applications (SBA) [1][2] for consumer and business users. The company is headquartered in Paris, France, and is a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes [3]
The company's CloudView product is an infrastructure-level search and information access platform used for both online and enterprise SBAs as well as enterprise search. SBAs use semantic technologies to aggregate and normalize unstructured, semi-structured and/or structured content across multiple repositories, and employ natural language technologies for accessing information. In the case of structured data, the SBA index replaces a traditional relational database structure as the primary vehicle for information access and reporting.
The CloudView product is also the platform for the public Web search engine, which was designed to apply semantic processing and faceted navigation to Web data volumes and usage. Exalead also operates an online R&D laboratory, Exalabs, which uses the Web as a medium for developing applied technologies for business. Exalabs projects include:
* Miiget and Constellations, relationship mapping search engines (semantic mining and visual modes of presenting search results)
* Wikifier, a module that incorporates Wikipedia information into web page content (data contextualization for unstructured content)
* Voxalead, an engine for searching within the content of videos. It relies on the Vocapia Research speech-to-text technology.
* Chromatik, a color-based image search engine (semantic multimedia search technologies)
* Tweepz, a search engine for finding people who are using Twitter (social search)
* Sourcier, a map-based service providing access to public data on subterranean water quality (map-centered information access)
Many of Exalabs projects are developed in conjunction with Exalead's partners in the Quaero [4][5] project.
Exalead was founded in 2000 by François Bourdoncle and Patrice Bertin (both of whom were involved in the development of the Alta Vista search engine), and began commercializing its products in 2005. Exalead employs approximately 140 people in 6 countries (in Paris, San Francisco, London, Glasgow, Milan, Rome, Madrid (past, office closed), Amsterdam, and Frankfurt ).
The company's CloudView product is an infrastructure-level search and information access platform used for both online and enterprise SBAs as well as enterprise search. SBAs use semantic technologies to aggregate and normalize unstructured, semi-structured and/or structured content across multiple repositories, and employ natural language technologies for accessing information. In the case of structured data, the SBA index replaces a traditional relational database structure as the primary vehicle for information access and reporting.
The CloudView product is also the platform for the public Web search engine, which was designed to apply semantic processing and faceted navigation to Web data volumes and usage. Exalead also operates an online R&D laboratory, Exalabs, which uses the Web as a medium for developing applied technologies for business. Exalabs projects include:
* Miiget and Constellations, relationship mapping search engines (semantic mining and visual modes of presenting search results)
* Wikifier, a module that incorporates Wikipedia information into web page content (data contextualization for unstructured content)
* Voxalead, an engine for searching within the content of videos. It relies on the Vocapia Research speech-to-text technology.
* Chromatik, a color-based image search engine (semantic multimedia search technologies)
* Tweepz, a search engine for finding people who are using Twitter (social search)
* Sourcier, a map-based service providing access to public data on subterranean water quality (map-centered information access)
Many of Exalabs projects are developed in conjunction with Exalead's partners in the Quaero [4][5] project.
Exalead was founded in 2000 by François Bourdoncle and Patrice Bertin (both of whom were involved in the development of the Alta Vista search engine), and began commercializing its products in 2005. Exalead employs approximately 140 people in 6 countries (in Paris, San Francisco, London, Glasgow, Milan, Rome, Madrid (past, office closed), Amsterdam, and Frankfurt ).
Friday, January 14, 2011
Duck Duck Go
Duck Duck Go is a search engine based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania that uses information from crowd-sourced sites (like Wikipedia) with the aim of augmenting traditional results and improving relevance. The search engine philosophy emphasizes privacy and does not record user information.[1]
Duck Duck Go was founded by Gabriel Weinberg, a serial entrepreneur whose last venture (The Names Database) was acquired by United Online (NASDAQ:UNTD) in 2006 for $10M.[2] Weinberg has a B.S. in Physics and an M.S. in Technology and Policy from MIT.[3] The project was initially self-funded by Weinberg and is intended to be advertising supported.[4] The search engine is written in Perl and runs on nginx and FreeBSD.[1]
Duck Duck Go is built primarily upon search APIs from major vendors (such as Yahoo! Search BOSS), because of this, TechCrunch characterized the service as a "hybrid" search engine.[5][6] At the same time, it produces its own content pages, and so also is similar to sites like Mahalo, Kosmix and SearchMe.[7]
Some reporters have called the name silly or inappropriate for a search engine.[8] When questioned about the name, Weinberg has explained, "[r]eally it just popped in my head one day and I just liked it. It is certainly influenced/derived from Duck Duck Goose, but other than that there is no relation, e.g. a metaphor."[9] The company's FAQ says "I just liked it. It is derived from Duck Duck Goose, but it's not a metaphor—really."[10]
Precise traffic statistics are not public, but Compete.com estimates 199,441 monthly visitors in May, 2010.[11] As of June 11, 2009, Alexa reported a 3 month growth rate of 134%.[12]
Duck Duck Go has been featured on Techcrunch as a part of Elevator Pitch Friday [13] and it was a finalist in the BOSS Mashable Challenge.[14]
In July 2010 Weinberg started a Duck Duck Go community website to allow the public to report problems, discuss means of spreading the search engine, request features and discuss open sourcing the code.[15]
Duck Duck Go's results are a mashup of many sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wikipedia, and its own Web crawler (DuckDuckBot).[1][16] It uses data from crowd-sourced sites, especially Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes, which are red boxes containing topic summaries and related topics above results.[17] Duck Duck Go also offers the ability to show mostly shopping sites or mostly info (non-shopping) sites via search buttons on its homepage.[18]
Duck Duck Go positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information, and only uses cookies when needed. Weinberg states "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell."[19]
Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are content mills, like Demand Media's eHow, which publishes 4000 articles per day produced by paid freelance writers, which Weinberg has indicated is "low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google's search index". Duck Duck Go attempts to filter eHow results as well as pages with lots of advertising.[20]
In August 2010 Duck Duck Go introduced anonymous searching, including an exit enclave, for its search engine traffic using Tor. This allows anonymity by routing traffic through a series of encrypted relays. Weinberg stated: "I believe this fits right in line with our privacy policy. Using Tor and DDG, you can now be end to end anonymous with your searching. And if you use our encrypted homepage, you can be end to end encrypted as well."[21]
Duck Duck Go was founded by Gabriel Weinberg, a serial entrepreneur whose last venture (The Names Database) was acquired by United Online (NASDAQ:UNTD) in 2006 for $10M.[2] Weinberg has a B.S. in Physics and an M.S. in Technology and Policy from MIT.[3] The project was initially self-funded by Weinberg and is intended to be advertising supported.[4] The search engine is written in Perl and runs on nginx and FreeBSD.[1]
Duck Duck Go is built primarily upon search APIs from major vendors (such as Yahoo! Search BOSS), because of this, TechCrunch characterized the service as a "hybrid" search engine.[5][6] At the same time, it produces its own content pages, and so also is similar to sites like Mahalo, Kosmix and SearchMe.[7]
Some reporters have called the name silly or inappropriate for a search engine.[8] When questioned about the name, Weinberg has explained, "[r]eally it just popped in my head one day and I just liked it. It is certainly influenced/derived from Duck Duck Goose, but other than that there is no relation, e.g. a metaphor."[9] The company's FAQ says "I just liked it. It is derived from Duck Duck Goose, but it's not a metaphor—really."[10]
Precise traffic statistics are not public, but Compete.com estimates 199,441 monthly visitors in May, 2010.[11] As of June 11, 2009, Alexa reported a 3 month growth rate of 134%.[12]
Duck Duck Go has been featured on Techcrunch as a part of Elevator Pitch Friday [13] and it was a finalist in the BOSS Mashable Challenge.[14]
In July 2010 Weinberg started a Duck Duck Go community website to allow the public to report problems, discuss means of spreading the search engine, request features and discuss open sourcing the code.[15]
Duck Duck Go's results are a mashup of many sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wikipedia, and its own Web crawler (DuckDuckBot).[1][16] It uses data from crowd-sourced sites, especially Wikipedia, to populate "Zero-click Info" boxes, which are red boxes containing topic summaries and related topics above results.[17] Duck Duck Go also offers the ability to show mostly shopping sites or mostly info (non-shopping) sites via search buttons on its homepage.[18]
Duck Duck Go positions itself as a search engine that puts privacy first and as such it does not store IP addresses, does not log user information, and only uses cookies when needed. Weinberg states "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell."[19]
Weinberg has refined the quality of his search engine results by deleting search results for companies he believes are content mills, like Demand Media's eHow, which publishes 4000 articles per day produced by paid freelance writers, which Weinberg has indicated is "low-quality content designed specifically to rank highly in Google's search index". Duck Duck Go attempts to filter eHow results as well as pages with lots of advertising.[20]
In August 2010 Duck Duck Go introduced anonymous searching, including an exit enclave, for its search engine traffic using Tor. This allows anonymity by routing traffic through a series of encrypted relays. Weinberg stated: "I believe this fits right in line with our privacy policy. Using Tor and DDG, you can now be end to end anonymous with your searching. And if you use our encrypted homepage, you can be end to end encrypted as well."[21]
Dogpile
Dogpile is a metasearch engine that fetches results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask.com, About.com and several other popular search engines, including those from audio and video content providers. It is a registered trademark of InfoSpace, Inc.
Dogpile began operation in November 1996. The site was created and developed by Aaron Flin and later sold to Go2net (which was in turn acquired by Infospace).
The Dogpile search engine earned the J.D. Power and Associates award for best Residential Online Search Engine Service in both 2006[1] and 2007.[2]
Dogpile started a campaign in 2008 to use proceeds from site traffic to raise US$1 million for animals in need.[3]
In July 2010, Dogpile was ranked the 770th most popular website in the U.S., and 2548th most popular in the world by Alexa. Quantcast etimated 2.0 million unique U.S. visitors a month, and Compete estimated 1,953,280.[4][5][6]
Dogpile is a metasearch site — it searches multiple engines, filters for duplicates and then presents the results to the user. Dogpile uses multiple popular search engines, as well as sponsored links.
Dogpile began operation in November 1996. The site was created and developed by Aaron Flin and later sold to Go2net (which was in turn acquired by Infospace).
The Dogpile search engine earned the J.D. Power and Associates award for best Residential Online Search Engine Service in both 2006[1] and 2007.[2]
Dogpile started a campaign in 2008 to use proceeds from site traffic to raise US$1 million for animals in need.[3]
In July 2010, Dogpile was ranked the 770th most popular website in the U.S., and 2548th most popular in the world by Alexa. Quantcast etimated 2.0 million unique U.S. visitors a month, and Compete estimated 1,953,280.[4][5][6]
Dogpile is a metasearch site — it searches multiple engines, filters for duplicates and then presents the results to the user. Dogpile uses multiple popular search engines, as well as sponsored links.
Daum
Daum is a popular web portal in South Korea, like Naver and Nate. Daum offers many Internet services to web users, including a popular free web-based e-mail, messaging service, forums, shopping and news. The word "daum" means "next" in Korean.
The popularity of Daum is a reflection of the high level of internet use in South Korea. The country has the highest level of broadband users, and one of the most widespread levels of computer and Internet access.
The popularity of Daum stems from the range of services it offers, but also from the fact that it was the first Korean web portal of significant size. Its popularity started when it merged with the then most popular e-mail service, daum.net or hanmail.net. After the merging, Daum started the forum service DaumCafe which brought its firm status in the market. The term cafe and even internet cafe (Different from what is supposed to refer to in Western usage) is now used as the synonym for "Internet forum" in Korean.
On August 2, 2004 Daum announced the purchase of Lycos for $95.4 million, and closed the transaction on October 6.[1]
Daum has about 874 employees as of Mar, 2009.
The popularity of Daum is a reflection of the high level of internet use in South Korea. The country has the highest level of broadband users, and one of the most widespread levels of computer and Internet access.
The popularity of Daum stems from the range of services it offers, but also from the fact that it was the first Korean web portal of significant size. Its popularity started when it merged with the then most popular e-mail service, daum.net or hanmail.net. After the merging, Daum started the forum service DaumCafe which brought its firm status in the market. The term cafe and even internet cafe (Different from what is supposed to refer to in Western usage) is now used as the synonym for "Internet forum" in Korean.
On August 2, 2004 Daum announced the purchase of Lycos for $95.4 million, and closed the transaction on October 6.[1]
Daum has about 874 employees as of Mar, 2009.
Cuil
Cuil was a search engine that organized web pages by content and displayed relatively long entries along with thumbnail pictures for many results. Cuil said it had a larger index than any other search engine, with about 120 billion web pages.[1] It went live on July 28, 2008.[1] Cuil's servers were shut down on September 17, 2010, with later confirmations the service had ended.[2][3][4][5]
Cuil was managed and developed largely by former employees of Google, Anna Patterson and Russell Power. The CEO and co-founder, Tom Costello, has worked for IBM and others.[6] The company had raised $33 million from venture capital firms including Greylock.[7] In 2010, Cuil Inc. was recognized as one of the leading Silicon Valley companies by Lead411.[8] Cuil's privacy policy, unlike that of other search engines,[9] said it did not store users’ search activity or IP addresses.[10]
Cuil launched in July 2008 with an index of 121,617,892,992 web pages.[11] About one month after launch, Cuil's Product VP and search technologist, Louis Monier, quit the company citing disagreements with the CEO, Tom Costello.[12] On December 19, 2008, BusinessWeek listed Cuil as one of the most successful U.S. startups of 2008, based on the amount of money they raised.[13] As of February, 2009, Cuil had 127 billion indexed pages.[14] According to Alexa, the site reached a peak of just over 0.2% of worldwide internet users in late July 2008 and by September 12, 2008, it had dropped to 0.02% and ranked as the 5,340th site by traffic. By October 13, 2008, it had dropped to 0.005% and ranked as the 21,960th site in traffic.[15]
PC Magazine reported that on the morning of September 17, 2010 "employees were told about Cuil's demise [...] and the servers were taken offline five hours later."[16] Laid-off employees were told they would not be paid. The shutdown reportedly came after an acquisition agreement fell through earlier in the week.[17]
A user could log into their Facebook account via Cuil, which would then search friend updates for topics, with search links. A user could also send messages to their friends through Cuil.[18]
Cuil worked on an automated encyclopedia called Cpedia, built by algorithmically summarizing and clustering ideas on the web[19] to create encyclopedia-like reports. Instead of displaying search results, Cuil would show Cpedia articles matching the searched terms. This was meant to reduce duplication by combining information into one document.
Cuil was available in 8 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. More were planned.[20][21]
The Irish ancestry of Anna Patterson's husband Tom Costello sparked the name Cuil, which the company states is taken from a series of Celtic folklore stories involving a character, Fionn mac Cumhaill, they erroneously refer to as Finn MacCuil .[1] The company says that Cuil is Irish for knowledge and hazel.[22]
Some linguists are unsure of this derivation and pronunciation,[23] and note that the modern Irish word for hazel is spelled coll[24] (coill or cuill in genitive form, the former spelling having superseded the latter as a result of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil reforms of the mid-twentieth century). Foras na Gaeilge, the official governing body of the Irish language, doubted the assertion that 'cuil' means 'knowledge'.[23] "I am unaware myself of the meaning 'knowledge' being with the word 'cuil' in Irish," Stiofán Ó Deoráin, an official on Foras na Gaeilge's terminology committee, said.[23] Even pre-Caighdeán dictionaries such as Dineen[25] do not associate the cuil spelling with knowledge or hazel. Dineen only lists two nouns and one adjective with the spelling cuil: "f., a fly, a horse-fly...", "f., a venemous aspect; great eagerness..." and "gs. of col, as a., wicked."
The company name had previously been spelled Cuill.[26]
Cuil had received widely critical press coverage.[27][28][29] Concerns were expressed about the website's slow response times, irrelevant or wrong search results[30][31][32] and in at least one case, inappropriately pornographic images displayed alongside search results.[33] Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch questioned the validity of Cuil's claim that it had the world's largest search engine index and criticized it for focusing on size rather than relevance.[34] Despite reported problems with search results, Net Applications reported that for the last three days of July 2008, Cuil beat Google and Yahoo in the amount of time spent on a site after referral from a search engine, a key metric for relevancy of search results.[35]
According to an interview with a Cuil representative, while other Web 2.0 launches using massively parallel processing might fail with a slow down or crash,[27] Cuil's architecture was responding with incomplete, "less-than-relevant results that then appear at the top of users' pages."[30][32] Cuil's VP of communications Vince Sollitto said the search engine was experiencing heavy first-day overloads and they were "busy putting out fires." Sollitto said Cuil "will only improve with time. It's day one. Traffic is massive. We're new. There are bugs to fix, results to improve."[27]
After the initial critical press coverage, Cuil was alleged to have caused issues for some websites, owing to how the Cuil indexing robot polled certain sites (including under its pre-release name, Cuill).[36] Many website owners reported that the Twiceler crawler repeatedly hit their site with randomly generated URLs in an attempt to find pages unaccessible by links.[37] Others reported irrelevant images associated with their listing in Cuil's search results.[38]
Cuil was managed and developed largely by former employees of Google, Anna Patterson and Russell Power. The CEO and co-founder, Tom Costello, has worked for IBM and others.[6] The company had raised $33 million from venture capital firms including Greylock.[7] In 2010, Cuil Inc. was recognized as one of the leading Silicon Valley companies by Lead411.[8] Cuil's privacy policy, unlike that of other search engines,[9] said it did not store users’ search activity or IP addresses.[10]
Cuil launched in July 2008 with an index of 121,617,892,992 web pages.[11] About one month after launch, Cuil's Product VP and search technologist, Louis Monier, quit the company citing disagreements with the CEO, Tom Costello.[12] On December 19, 2008, BusinessWeek listed Cuil as one of the most successful U.S. startups of 2008, based on the amount of money they raised.[13] As of February, 2009, Cuil had 127 billion indexed pages.[14] According to Alexa, the site reached a peak of just over 0.2% of worldwide internet users in late July 2008 and by September 12, 2008, it had dropped to 0.02% and ranked as the 5,340th site by traffic. By October 13, 2008, it had dropped to 0.005% and ranked as the 21,960th site in traffic.[15]
PC Magazine reported that on the morning of September 17, 2010 "employees were told about Cuil's demise [...] and the servers were taken offline five hours later."[16] Laid-off employees were told they would not be paid. The shutdown reportedly came after an acquisition agreement fell through earlier in the week.[17]
A user could log into their Facebook account via Cuil, which would then search friend updates for topics, with search links. A user could also send messages to their friends through Cuil.[18]
Cuil worked on an automated encyclopedia called Cpedia, built by algorithmically summarizing and clustering ideas on the web[19] to create encyclopedia-like reports. Instead of displaying search results, Cuil would show Cpedia articles matching the searched terms. This was meant to reduce duplication by combining information into one document.
Cuil was available in 8 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. More were planned.[20][21]
The Irish ancestry of Anna Patterson's husband Tom Costello sparked the name Cuil, which the company states is taken from a series of Celtic folklore stories involving a character, Fionn mac Cumhaill, they erroneously refer to as Finn MacCuil .[1] The company says that Cuil is Irish for knowledge and hazel.[22]
Some linguists are unsure of this derivation and pronunciation,[23] and note that the modern Irish word for hazel is spelled coll[24] (coill or cuill in genitive form, the former spelling having superseded the latter as a result of the Caighdeán Oifigiúil reforms of the mid-twentieth century). Foras na Gaeilge, the official governing body of the Irish language, doubted the assertion that 'cuil' means 'knowledge'.[23] "I am unaware myself of the meaning 'knowledge' being with the word 'cuil' in Irish," Stiofán Ó Deoráin, an official on Foras na Gaeilge's terminology committee, said.[23] Even pre-Caighdeán dictionaries such as Dineen[25] do not associate the cuil spelling with knowledge or hazel. Dineen only lists two nouns and one adjective with the spelling cuil: "f., a fly, a horse-fly...", "f., a venemous aspect; great eagerness..." and "gs. of col, as a., wicked."
The company name had previously been spelled Cuill.[26]
Cuil had received widely critical press coverage.[27][28][29] Concerns were expressed about the website's slow response times, irrelevant or wrong search results[30][31][32] and in at least one case, inappropriately pornographic images displayed alongside search results.[33] Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch questioned the validity of Cuil's claim that it had the world's largest search engine index and criticized it for focusing on size rather than relevance.[34] Despite reported problems with search results, Net Applications reported that for the last three days of July 2008, Cuil beat Google and Yahoo in the amount of time spent on a site after referral from a search engine, a key metric for relevancy of search results.[35]
According to an interview with a Cuil representative, while other Web 2.0 launches using massively parallel processing might fail with a slow down or crash,[27] Cuil's architecture was responding with incomplete, "less-than-relevant results that then appear at the top of users' pages."[30][32] Cuil's VP of communications Vince Sollitto said the search engine was experiencing heavy first-day overloads and they were "busy putting out fires." Sollitto said Cuil "will only improve with time. It's day one. Traffic is massive. We're new. There are bugs to fix, results to improve."[27]
After the initial critical press coverage, Cuil was alleged to have caused issues for some websites, owing to how the Cuil indexing robot polled certain sites (including under its pre-release name, Cuill).[36] Many website owners reported that the Twiceler crawler repeatedly hit their site with randomly generated URLs in an attempt to find pages unaccessible by links.[37] Others reported irrelevant images associated with their listing in Cuil's search results.[38]
ChaCha (search engine)
ChaCha is a search engine which specializes in a question answering service that uses a technique known as the human search engine. ChaCha was created by Scott A. Jones and Brad Bostic. The company is based in Carmel, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, United States.
The name ChaCha comes from the Mandarin Chinese word, cha traditional Chinese: , which means "to search." [2]
The alpha version of the ChaCha was launched on September 1, 2006. A beta version was introduced on November 6, 2006.[3] ChaCha said 20,000 guides had registered by year end and that it had raised US$6 million in development funds, including support from Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment firm owned by Jeff Bezos, the entrepreneur behind Amazon.com.[4] By January 2008 AP reported that ChaCha had 5,000 freelance guides with no less than 500 working at any one time.[5] Washington Post partner mogonews.com reported that ChaCha's first round of equity financing was actually US$14 million plus a US$2 million grant from 21st Century Technology Fund.[6] ChaCha announced on March 17, 2009[7] a new round of equity financing totaling US$12 million[8] while also laying off 25 employees and a 10 percent reduction in the remaining 56 salaries.[1][9]
In July 2010, ChaCha Inc. was recognized as one of the “2010 Hottest Companies in the Midwest” by Lead411.[10]
ChaCha has experienced significant growth since it was launched in September 2006. The site is currently[when?] verified to have broken 17 million unique visitors according to Quantcast, making it approximately the 68th largest site in the United States. ChaCha answered 900 million questions by the end of October 2010 – and expects to cross the 1 billion mark in December 2010.[citation needed]
ChaCha had originally been founded with the intention to offer human-guided search from within a web browser and for the search engine to learn from the results provided by their independent contractors.[11] The system offered a chat on the left side of the page where users could chat with the guides and conclude their search.[11] The center of the page contained the results that a guide could add or remove (later users could also add or remove these results). The right side of the page contained ads that were relevant to the search.[12]
Desktop search was phased out in April 2008 in favor of mobile products.[13]
In January 2008 ChaCha launched a new SMS that allowed users to ask questions and receive answers via text messaging.[14] A plain sentence question will get an answer along with a link to a short URL that takes users to a page that contains source information along with the guide's name. Users would text to 242-242 and guides would answer.[15]
During ChaCha's initial start up in 2008, Google controlled 100% of the total market for text-based mobile searching. According to a Nielson Mobile Report, in the third quarter of 2009, ChaCha's text-messaging service surpassed Google in text messaging traffic.
ChaCha launched its beta version of a call-in search service on April 1, 2008, while discontinuing its less effective guided web search.[13] Users call a toll-free number, and their questions are answered by a human via SMS messaging.
In July 2008, ChaCha launched its first mobile marketing campaign with Coca-Cola to promote its My Coke Rewards program to users interested in NASCAR racing.[16] Fox News reported that ChaCha planned by mid 2008 to charge $5–$10 per month once 10 queries was exceeded[17] (as of July 26, 2010 no additional fees have been implemented).[18]
In November, 2008, ChaCha launched its SMS Advertising Platform at ad:tech New York.[19][20]
In March 2009, ChaCha reported 30 million "impressions per month" and "3.6 million users" since January 2008.[21][22] An ESPN article stated that ChaCha gets about 1,000,000 questions each day according to their tipsheets.[23] A former Yahoo executive opened a New York office for ChaCha in hopes of increasing advertising.[1][24]
ChaCha uses independent contractors called Guides.[25] There are four main types of guides: Expeditors, Generalists, Specialists and Transcribers.[26] Expeditors categorize questions, convert them into standard form, provide direct responses for certain question types, and also make sure that an answer doesn't already exist for that question.[27] The purposes of a Generalist, "the original and basic ChaCha Guide role," are to: determine what the customer's question is, find an answer to the question using the internet, format the answer into a text message, and add "magic" to the answer which gives it a human quality.[28] Specialists are a more selective group of guides. They have all of the same purposes as a Generalist but they sign up for specific categories of questions based on their interest in and knowledge of those categories.[29] The duty of Transcribers is to listen to questions recorded by customers who call into 1-800-2ChaCha then convert the recorded message into text form so that Generalists and Specialists can answer them.[30]
Guides are paid on a per-query basis, with those hired after December 1, 2009, and those who were hired before that date that decide to work in the Points mode, work exclusively for "points" for each search or task they complete. These points are converted to cash on the second business day of each month, which is determined by the Tier those Guides as a whole. Tiers are based upon the amount of queries the Guides complete.[31] The pool for December 2009 was $50,000.[32] This was increased to $75,000 in January 2010,[33] $100,000 in February,[34] and $125,000 in March.[35] Expediters and Transcribers earn 2 points per completed session,[36] while Generalist/Specialist Guides earn 8.[37] These points are currently estimated to be worth about half a cent each, meaning that Generalists and Specialists can expect to make about $0.04 for each question answered, while Expediters and Transcribers earn $0.01 for every two questions answered.[38] Those hired before December 1, 2009 have the option to work for cash ($0.02 per session for Expediters, $0.03 per session for Transcribers, and $0.10 to $0.20 per session for Generalist/Specialist Guides) in "traditional mode," or for points.
The name ChaCha comes from the Mandarin Chinese word, cha traditional Chinese: , which means "to search." [2]
The alpha version of the ChaCha was launched on September 1, 2006. A beta version was introduced on November 6, 2006.[3] ChaCha said 20,000 guides had registered by year end and that it had raised US$6 million in development funds, including support from Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment firm owned by Jeff Bezos, the entrepreneur behind Amazon.com.[4] By January 2008 AP reported that ChaCha had 5,000 freelance guides with no less than 500 working at any one time.[5] Washington Post partner mogonews.com reported that ChaCha's first round of equity financing was actually US$14 million plus a US$2 million grant from 21st Century Technology Fund.[6] ChaCha announced on March 17, 2009[7] a new round of equity financing totaling US$12 million[8] while also laying off 25 employees and a 10 percent reduction in the remaining 56 salaries.[1][9]
In July 2010, ChaCha Inc. was recognized as one of the “2010 Hottest Companies in the Midwest” by Lead411.[10]
ChaCha has experienced significant growth since it was launched in September 2006. The site is currently[when?] verified to have broken 17 million unique visitors according to Quantcast, making it approximately the 68th largest site in the United States. ChaCha answered 900 million questions by the end of October 2010 – and expects to cross the 1 billion mark in December 2010.[citation needed]
ChaCha had originally been founded with the intention to offer human-guided search from within a web browser and for the search engine to learn from the results provided by their independent contractors.[11] The system offered a chat on the left side of the page where users could chat with the guides and conclude their search.[11] The center of the page contained the results that a guide could add or remove (later users could also add or remove these results). The right side of the page contained ads that were relevant to the search.[12]
Desktop search was phased out in April 2008 in favor of mobile products.[13]
In January 2008 ChaCha launched a new SMS that allowed users to ask questions and receive answers via text messaging.[14] A plain sentence question will get an answer along with a link to a short URL that takes users to a page that contains source information along with the guide's name. Users would text to 242-242 and guides would answer.[15]
During ChaCha's initial start up in 2008, Google controlled 100% of the total market for text-based mobile searching. According to a Nielson Mobile Report, in the third quarter of 2009, ChaCha's text-messaging service surpassed Google in text messaging traffic.
ChaCha launched its beta version of a call-in search service on April 1, 2008, while discontinuing its less effective guided web search.[13] Users call a toll-free number, and their questions are answered by a human via SMS messaging.
In July 2008, ChaCha launched its first mobile marketing campaign with Coca-Cola to promote its My Coke Rewards program to users interested in NASCAR racing.[16] Fox News reported that ChaCha planned by mid 2008 to charge $5–$10 per month once 10 queries was exceeded[17] (as of July 26, 2010 no additional fees have been implemented).[18]
In November, 2008, ChaCha launched its SMS Advertising Platform at ad:tech New York.[19][20]
In March 2009, ChaCha reported 30 million "impressions per month" and "3.6 million users" since January 2008.[21][22] An ESPN article stated that ChaCha gets about 1,000,000 questions each day according to their tipsheets.[23] A former Yahoo executive opened a New York office for ChaCha in hopes of increasing advertising.[1][24]
ChaCha uses independent contractors called Guides.[25] There are four main types of guides: Expeditors, Generalists, Specialists and Transcribers.[26] Expeditors categorize questions, convert them into standard form, provide direct responses for certain question types, and also make sure that an answer doesn't already exist for that question.[27] The purposes of a Generalist, "the original and basic ChaCha Guide role," are to: determine what the customer's question is, find an answer to the question using the internet, format the answer into a text message, and add "magic" to the answer which gives it a human quality.[28] Specialists are a more selective group of guides. They have all of the same purposes as a Generalist but they sign up for specific categories of questions based on their interest in and knowledge of those categories.[29] The duty of Transcribers is to listen to questions recorded by customers who call into 1-800-2ChaCha then convert the recorded message into text form so that Generalists and Specialists can answer them.[30]
Guides are paid on a per-query basis, with those hired after December 1, 2009, and those who were hired before that date that decide to work in the Points mode, work exclusively for "points" for each search or task they complete. These points are converted to cash on the second business day of each month, which is determined by the Tier those Guides as a whole. Tiers are based upon the amount of queries the Guides complete.[31] The pool for December 2009 was $50,000.[32] This was increased to $75,000 in January 2010,[33] $100,000 in February,[34] and $125,000 in March.[35] Expediters and Transcribers earn 2 points per completed session,[36] while Generalist/Specialist Guides earn 8.[37] These points are currently estimated to be worth about half a cent each, meaning that Generalists and Specialists can expect to make about $0.04 for each question answered, while Expediters and Transcribers earn $0.01 for every two questions answered.[38] Those hired before December 1, 2009 have the option to work for cash ($0.02 per session for Expediters, $0.03 per session for Transcribers, and $0.10 to $0.20 per session for Generalist/Specialist Guides) in "traditional mode," or for points.
Boogami
Boogami is a search engine that was developed by James Wildish, a sixteen year old college student from Kent in United Kingdom. It combines a search engine with a pixel advertising grid that appears every time someone uses Boogami to search the Internet, and for the fact that it offers free pixel advertising to charities.
James approached the Where On Earth Group and internet marketing specialists Divadani for help in launching Boogami and making it a success. As a result, the British media[1][2] soon picked up on the story and with the media coverage received, Boogami quickly grew in popularity.
However, it no longer works. Every search term returns: "Your Search produced No Results".
In November 2008, James launched Boogami Life, a social networking site with a number of unique features. Businesses would be able to promote themselves by messaging all members of Boogami Life, providing an extremely powerful marketing tool. Boogami Life would actively participate and raise money for good causes and people could make direct appeals to all members to help find missing persons. Members would also be provided with opportunities to make money through a number of income streams as membership grows.
James approached the Where On Earth Group and internet marketing specialists Divadani for help in launching Boogami and making it a success. As a result, the British media[1][2] soon picked up on the story and with the media coverage received, Boogami quickly grew in popularity.
However, it no longer works. Every search term returns: "Your Search produced No Results".
In November 2008, James launched Boogami Life, a social networking site with a number of unique features. Businesses would be able to promote themselves by messaging all members of Boogami Life, providing an extremely powerful marketing tool. Boogami Life would actively participate and raise money for good causes and people could make direct appeals to all members to help find missing persons. Members would also be provided with opportunities to make money through a number of income streams as membership grows.
blekko
blekko is a web search engine that aims at providing better search results than those offered by Google Search by offering results culled from a set of 3 billion trusted websites and excluding material from such sites as content farms. The site, launched to the public on November 1, 2010, uses slashtags to provide results for common searches.
The company was co-founded by Rich Skrenta in 2007, who had created Newhoo, which was ultimately acquired by Netscape and renamed as the Open Directory Project.[2] blekko has raised $24 million in venture capital from such individuals as Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, as well as from U.S. Venture Partners and CMEA Capital.[3] The company's goal was to be able to provide useful search results without the extraneous links often provided by Google. Individuals who enter searches for such frequently searched categories as cars, finance, health and hotels will receive results prescreened by blekko editors who will use what The New York Times described as "Wikipedia-style policing" to weed out pages created by content farms and focus on results from professionals.[4] Use of slashtags will restrict the set of search results to those matching the specified characteristic and a slashtag will be automatically added for search categories with prescreened results.[5] Queries related to personal health are limited to a prescreened list of 76 sites that blekko editors have determined to be trustworthy, excluding many sites that rank highly in Google searches.[2] As of blekko's launch date, its 8,000 beta editors had developed 3,000 slashtags corresponding to the site's most frequent searches.[5] The company hopes to use editors to develop prepared lists of the 50 sites that best match its 100,000 most frequent search targets.[2] Additional tools built into blekko allow users to see the IP address that a website is running on and let registered users label a site as spam.[6]
Blekko plans to earn revenue by selling ads based on slashtags and search results. Blekko plans to provide data on its algorithm for ranking search results, including details for inbound links to specific sites.[4]
Blekko uses an initiative called slashtags[7], to allow ease of searching and categorise searches. There are many system slashtags and pre-defined slashtags, which are in place to allow users to start searching right away. /slashtags are able to be created by anyone on signup, to allow sorted searches and reduce spam. This idea was based on the following bill, thought up by the owner of blekko:
1. Search shall be open
2. Search results shall involve people
3. Ranking data shall not be kept secret
4. Web data shall be readily available
5. There is no one-size-fits-all for search
6. Advanced search shall be accessible
7. Search engine tools shall be open to all
8. Search & community go hand-in-hand
9. Spam does not belong in search results
10. Privacy of searchers shall not be violated
Here is a list of features readily available for all users to access:
* SEO Statistics
* Linking pages (in and out stats)
* IP lookup
* Cached pages
* Tagging of pages
* Creating and searching /slashtags
* Finding duplicate content
* Comparing sites
* Crawl statistics
* Page Count
* Robots.txt location
* Cohosted sites
* Page latency
* Page length
The company was co-founded by Rich Skrenta in 2007, who had created Newhoo, which was ultimately acquired by Netscape and renamed as the Open Directory Project.[2] blekko has raised $24 million in venture capital from such individuals as Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway, as well as from U.S. Venture Partners and CMEA Capital.[3] The company's goal was to be able to provide useful search results without the extraneous links often provided by Google. Individuals who enter searches for such frequently searched categories as cars, finance, health and hotels will receive results prescreened by blekko editors who will use what The New York Times described as "Wikipedia-style policing" to weed out pages created by content farms and focus on results from professionals.[4] Use of slashtags will restrict the set of search results to those matching the specified characteristic and a slashtag will be automatically added for search categories with prescreened results.[5] Queries related to personal health are limited to a prescreened list of 76 sites that blekko editors have determined to be trustworthy, excluding many sites that rank highly in Google searches.[2] As of blekko's launch date, its 8,000 beta editors had developed 3,000 slashtags corresponding to the site's most frequent searches.[5] The company hopes to use editors to develop prepared lists of the 50 sites that best match its 100,000 most frequent search targets.[2] Additional tools built into blekko allow users to see the IP address that a website is running on and let registered users label a site as spam.[6]
Blekko plans to earn revenue by selling ads based on slashtags and search results. Blekko plans to provide data on its algorithm for ranking search results, including details for inbound links to specific sites.[4]
Blekko uses an initiative called slashtags[7], to allow ease of searching and categorise searches. There are many system slashtags and pre-defined slashtags, which are in place to allow users to start searching right away. /slashtags are able to be created by anyone on signup, to allow sorted searches and reduce spam. This idea was based on the following bill, thought up by the owner of blekko:
1. Search shall be open
2. Search results shall involve people
3. Ranking data shall not be kept secret
4. Web data shall be readily available
5. There is no one-size-fits-all for search
6. Advanced search shall be accessible
7. Search engine tools shall be open to all
8. Search & community go hand-in-hand
9. Spam does not belong in search results
10. Privacy of searchers shall not be violated
Here is a list of features readily available for all users to access:
* SEO Statistics
* Linking pages (in and out stats)
* IP lookup
* Cached pages
* Tagging of pages
* Creating and searching /slashtags
* Finding duplicate content
* Comparing sites
* Crawl statistics
* Page Count
* Robots.txt location
* Cohosted sites
* Page latency
* Page length
Blackle.com
Blackle is a website powered by Google Custom Search, which aims to save energy by displaying a black background and using grayish-white font color for search results. Blackle has claimed to have saved over 2,000,000 watt hours. This claim is under dispute a lot.[2].
The concept behind Blackle is that computer monitors can be made to consume less energy by displaying much darker colors. Blackle is based on a study which tested a variety of CRT and LCD monitors. There is dispute over whether there really are any energy saving effects.[3][4][5]
This concept was first brought to the attention of Efap Media by a blog post, which estimated that Google could save 750 megawatt hours a year by utilizing it for CRT screens.[1][6] The homepage of Blackle provides a count of the number of watt hours claimed to have been saved by enabling this concept.The concept behind Blackle is that computer monitors can be made to consume less energy by displaying much darker colors. Blackle is based on a study which tested a variety of CRT and LCD monitors. There is dispute over whether there really are any energy saving effects.[3][4][5]
No evidence exists to support the idea that black screens on modern LCD displays use less power than white screens. Google has admitted that the opposite may be true for LCD screens where black uses more energy than white[7]. Despite of that opinion the german physicist Oanh Hoang claimed the idea that a light "behind" the screen may expends less energy.
The concept behind Blackle is that computer monitors can be made to consume less energy by displaying much darker colors. Blackle is based on a study which tested a variety of CRT and LCD monitors. There is dispute over whether there really are any energy saving effects.[3][4][5]
This concept was first brought to the attention of Efap Media by a blog post, which estimated that Google could save 750 megawatt hours a year by utilizing it for CRT screens.[1][6] The homepage of Blackle provides a count of the number of watt hours claimed to have been saved by enabling this concept.The concept behind Blackle is that computer monitors can be made to consume less energy by displaying much darker colors. Blackle is based on a study which tested a variety of CRT and LCD monitors. There is dispute over whether there really are any energy saving effects.[3][4][5]
No evidence exists to support the idea that black screens on modern LCD displays use less power than white screens. Google has admitted that the opposite may be true for LCD screens where black uses more energy than white[7]. Despite of that opinion the german physicist Oanh Hoang claimed the idea that a light "behind" the screen may expends less energy.
Bing (search engine)
Bing (formerly Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) is a web search engine (advertised as a "decision engine")[2] from Microsoft. Bing was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 28, 2009 at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego. It went fully online on June 3, 2009,[3] with a preview version released on June 1, 2009.
Notable changes include the listing of search suggestions as queries are entered and a list of related searches (called "Explorer pane") based on[4] semantic technology from Powerset that Microsoft purchased in 2008.[5]
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.[6]
MSN Search was a search engine by Microsoft that comprised a search engine, index, and web crawler. MSN Search first launched in the third quarter of 1998 and used search results from Inktomi. In early 1999, MSN Search launched a version which displayed listings from Looksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a short time in 1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. Since then Microsoft upgraded MSN Search to provide its own self-built search engine results, the index of which was updated weekly and sometimes daily. The upgrade started as a beta program in November 2004, and came out of beta in February 2005. Image search was powered by a third party, Picsearch. The service also started providing its search results to other search engine portals in an effort to better compete in the market.
[edit] Windows Live Search
Windows Live Search homepage
The first public beta of Windows Live Search was unveiled on March 8, 2006, with the final release on September 11, 2006 replacing MSN Search. The new search engine used search tabs that include Web, news, images, music, desktop, local, and Microsoft Encarta.
In the roll-over from MSN Search to Windows Live Search, Microsoft stopped using Picsearch as their image search provider and started performing their own image search, fueled by their own internal image search algorithms.[7]
On March 21, 2007, Microsoft announced that it would separate its search developments from the Windows Live services family, rebranding the service as Live Search. Live Search was integrated into the Live Search and Ad Platform headed by Satya Nadella, part of Microsoft's Platform and Systems division. As part of this change, Live Search was merged with Microsoft adCenter.[8]
A series of reorganisations and consolidations of Microsoft's search offerings were made under the Live Search branding. On May 23, 2008, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Live Search Books and Live Search Academic and integrated all academic and book search results into regular search, and as a result this also included the closure of Live Search Books Publisher Program. Soon after, Windows Live Expo was discontinued on July 31, 2008. Live Search Macros, a service for users to create their own custom search engines or use macros created by other users, was also discontinued shortly after. On May 15, 2009, Live Product Upload, a service which allowed merchants to upload products information onto Live Search Products, was discontinued. The final reorganisation came as Live Search QnA was rebranded as MSN QnA on February 18, 2009, however, it was subsequently discontinued on May 21, 2009.[9]
Microsoft recognised that there would be a brand issue as long as the word "Live" remained in the name.[10] As an effort to create a new identity for Microsoft's search services, Live Search was officially replaced by Bing on June 3, 2009.[11]
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they had made a 10-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites. Yahoo! Search will still maintain its own user interface, but will eventually feature "Powered by Bing" branding.[12][13]
Before the launch of Bing the marketshare of Microsoft web search pages (MSN and Live search) had been steadily declining. As of October 2010[update], Bing is the fourth largest search engine on the web by query volume, at 3.25%, after its competitor Google at 83.34%, Yahoo at 6.32% and Baidu at 4.96%, according to Net Applications.[14] Bing's global share is 9.57% when considering that searches at both Yahoo and Bing are actually powered by the Bing search engine.
Bing allows webmasters to manage the web crawling status of their own websites through Bing Webmaster Center. Additionally, users may also submit contents to Bing via the following methods:
Bing Mobile allow users to conduct search queries on their mobile devices, either via the mobile browser or a downloadable mobile application. In the United States, Microsoft also operates a toll-free number for directory assistance called Bing 411.[21]
Both Windows Live Toolbar and MSN Toolbar will be powered by Bing and aim to offer users a way to access Bing search results. Together with the launch of Bing, MSN Toolbar 4.0 will be released with inclusion of new Bing-related features such as Bing cashback offer alerts.[21]
The Bing Search gadget is a Windows Sidebar Gadget that uses Bing Search to fetch the user's search results and render them directly in the gadget. Another gadget, the Bing Maps gadget, displays real-time traffic conditions using Bing Maps.[24] The gadget provides shortcuts to driving directions, local search and full-screen traffic view. However, traffic data is limited only for major US and Canadian cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Montreal, New York City, Oklahoma City, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C.
Prior to October 30, 2007, the gadgets were known as Live Search gadget and Live Search Maps gadget; both gadgets were removed from Windows Live Gallery due to possible security concerns.[25] The Live Search Maps gadget was made available for download again on January 24, 2008 with the security concern addressed.[26] However around the introduction of Bing in June 2009 both gadgets have been removed again for download from Windows Live Gallery.
Notable changes include the listing of search suggestions as queries are entered and a list of related searches (called "Explorer pane") based on[4] semantic technology from Powerset that Microsoft purchased in 2008.[5]
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.[6]
MSN Search was a search engine by Microsoft that comprised a search engine, index, and web crawler. MSN Search first launched in the third quarter of 1998 and used search results from Inktomi. In early 1999, MSN Search launched a version which displayed listings from Looksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a short time in 1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. Since then Microsoft upgraded MSN Search to provide its own self-built search engine results, the index of which was updated weekly and sometimes daily. The upgrade started as a beta program in November 2004, and came out of beta in February 2005. Image search was powered by a third party, Picsearch. The service also started providing its search results to other search engine portals in an effort to better compete in the market.
[edit] Windows Live Search
Windows Live Search homepage
The first public beta of Windows Live Search was unveiled on March 8, 2006, with the final release on September 11, 2006 replacing MSN Search. The new search engine used search tabs that include Web, news, images, music, desktop, local, and Microsoft Encarta.
In the roll-over from MSN Search to Windows Live Search, Microsoft stopped using Picsearch as their image search provider and started performing their own image search, fueled by their own internal image search algorithms.[7]
On March 21, 2007, Microsoft announced that it would separate its search developments from the Windows Live services family, rebranding the service as Live Search. Live Search was integrated into the Live Search and Ad Platform headed by Satya Nadella, part of Microsoft's Platform and Systems division. As part of this change, Live Search was merged with Microsoft adCenter.[8]
A series of reorganisations and consolidations of Microsoft's search offerings were made under the Live Search branding. On May 23, 2008, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Live Search Books and Live Search Academic and integrated all academic and book search results into regular search, and as a result this also included the closure of Live Search Books Publisher Program. Soon after, Windows Live Expo was discontinued on July 31, 2008. Live Search Macros, a service for users to create their own custom search engines or use macros created by other users, was also discontinued shortly after. On May 15, 2009, Live Product Upload, a service which allowed merchants to upload products information onto Live Search Products, was discontinued. The final reorganisation came as Live Search QnA was rebranded as MSN QnA on February 18, 2009, however, it was subsequently discontinued on May 21, 2009.[9]
Microsoft recognised that there would be a brand issue as long as the word "Live" remained in the name.[10] As an effort to create a new identity for Microsoft's search services, Live Search was officially replaced by Bing on June 3, 2009.[11]
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they had made a 10-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites. Yahoo! Search will still maintain its own user interface, but will eventually feature "Powered by Bing" branding.[12][13]
Before the launch of Bing the marketshare of Microsoft web search pages (MSN and Live search) had been steadily declining. As of October 2010[update], Bing is the fourth largest search engine on the web by query volume, at 3.25%, after its competitor Google at 83.34%, Yahoo at 6.32% and Baidu at 4.96%, according to Net Applications.[14] Bing's global share is 9.57% when considering that searches at both Yahoo and Bing are actually powered by the Bing search engine.
Bing allows webmasters to manage the web crawling status of their own websites through Bing Webmaster Center. Additionally, users may also submit contents to Bing via the following methods:
Bing Mobile allow users to conduct search queries on their mobile devices, either via the mobile browser or a downloadable mobile application. In the United States, Microsoft also operates a toll-free number for directory assistance called Bing 411.[21]
Both Windows Live Toolbar and MSN Toolbar will be powered by Bing and aim to offer users a way to access Bing search results. Together with the launch of Bing, MSN Toolbar 4.0 will be released with inclusion of new Bing-related features such as Bing cashback offer alerts.[21]
The Bing Search gadget is a Windows Sidebar Gadget that uses Bing Search to fetch the user's search results and render them directly in the gadget. Another gadget, the Bing Maps gadget, displays real-time traffic conditions using Bing Maps.[24] The gadget provides shortcuts to driving directions, local search and full-screen traffic view. However, traffic data is limited only for major US and Canadian cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Montreal, New York City, Oklahoma City, Ottawa, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington, D.C.
Prior to October 30, 2007, the gadgets were known as Live Search gadget and Live Search Maps gadget; both gadgets were removed from Windows Live Gallery due to possible security concerns.[25] The Live Search Maps gadget was made available for download again on January 24, 2008 with the security concern addressed.[26] However around the introduction of Bing in June 2009 both gadgets have been removed again for download from Windows Live Gallery.
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu offers 57 search and community services including Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively-built encyclopedia, and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum.[4] Baidu was established in 2000 by co-founders, Robin Li and Eric Xu. Both of the co-founders are Chinese nationals who have studied and worked overseas before returning to China. Baidu.com Inc. is registered in the Cayman Islands.[5] In April 2010[update], Baidu ranked 7th overall in Alexa's internet rankings.[6] In December 2007, Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the NASDAQ-100 index.[7]
Baidu provides an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files.[8] Baidu offers multi-media content including MP3 music and movies, and is the first in China to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search.
Baidu proactively censors its content in line with government regulations.[9]
Many people have asked about the meaning of our name. 'Baidu' was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. '...hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.' Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal. ”
The name "Baidu" is a quote from the last line of Xin Qiji's classical poem "Green Jade Table in The Lantern Festival" saying: "Having searched for him hundreds and thousands of times in the crowd, suddenly turning back by chance, I find him there in the dimmest candlelight."
The context of the poem is that in ancient China, girls had to stay indoors and the Lantern Festival was one of the few times they could come out. In the sea and chaos of lantern lights, they would sneak away to meet their love and exchange promises to meet again next year.
A summary of the entire poem: Flowers bursting into bloom in the sky, stars falling like rain (fireworks/meteor shower), Whole streets filled with perfume, jeweled horses pulling ornate carriages, fish and dragon lanterns dancing throughout the entire night. A body decorated with golden thread and butterfly trinket, laughter that has a subtle fragrance. Having searched for this person until exhaustion, when suddenly turning back by chance, I find him standing lonely in the far end of the street in the waning light.
In 1994, Robin Li joined IDD Information Services, a New Jersey division of Dow Jones and Company, where he helped develop a software program for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal.[11] He also did work on better algorithms for search engines. He remained at IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997.
In 1996, while at IDD, Li developed the RankDex site-scoring algorithm for search engines results page ranking [12][13][14] and received a US patent for the technology.[15] He later used this technology for the Baidu search engine.
Baidu offers a number of services to locate information, products and services using Chinese-language search terms, such as, search by Chinese phonetics, advanced search, snapshots, spell checker, stock quotes, news, knows, postbar, images, video and space information, and weather, train and flight schedules and other local information. The user-agent string of Baidu search engine is baiduspider.[16][17]
* Baidu Map (map.baidu.com)
* Baidu started its Japanese search service (www.baidu.jp), run by Baidu Japan, the company's first regular service outside of China. It includes a search bar for web pages and image searches, user help and advanced services.[18]
* Baidu Post Bar provides users with a query-based searchable community to exchange views and share knowledge and experiences. It is an online community bound tightly with Baidu's search service.
* Baidu News provides links to a selection of local, national and international news, and presents news stories in a searchable format, within minutes of their publication on the Web. Baidu News uses an automated process to display links to related headlines, which enables people to see many different viewpoints on the same story. Chinese government and Chinese industry sources stated that Baidu received a license from Beijing, which allows the search engine to become a full-fledged news website. Thus Baidu will be able to provide its own reports, besides showing certain results as a search engine. The company is already getting its news department ready. Baidu is the first Chinese search engine to receive such a license.[19]
* Baidu Knows provides users with a query-based searchable community to share knowledge and experience. Through Baidu Knows, registered members of Baidu Knows can post specific questions for other members to respond and also answer questions of other members.
* Baidu MP3 Search provides algorithm-generated links to songs and other multimedia files provided by Internet content providers. Baidu started with a popular music search feature called "MP3 Search" and its comprehensive lists of popular Chinese music (Baidu 500) based on download numbers. Baidu locates file formats such as MP3, WMA and SWF. The multimedia search feature is mainly used in searches for Chinese pop music. While such works are copyrighted under Chinese law, Baidu claims on its legal disclaimer that linking to these files does not break Chinese law. This has led other local search engines to follow the practice, including Google China, which uses an intermediate company called Top100 to offer a similar MP3 Search service.
* Baidu Image Search enables users to search millions of images on the Internet. Baidu Image Search offers features such as search by image size and by image file type. Image listings are organized by various categories, which are updated automatically through algorithms.
* Baidu Video Search enables users to search for and access through hyperlinks of online video clips that are hosted on third parties’ Websites.
* Baidu Space (hi.baidu.com), the social networking service of Baidu, allows registered users to create personalized homepages in a query-based searchable community. Registered users can post their Web logs, or blogs, photo album and certain personal information on their homepages and establish their own communities of friends who are also registered users. By July 2009, it had reached 100 million registered users
* Baidu Encyclopedia, is China's largest encyclopedia by users and page views/web traffic; second largest encyclopedia by article count (after Hudong).
o China Digital Village Encyclopedia in June 2009, Baidu announced it would compile the largest digital rural encyclopedia in China, according to China Securities Journal. It is expected to include 500,000 administrative villages in China, covering 80% of the total 600,000 villages in China. Baidu is creating the content of this encyclopedia largely from participants of its 'rural information competition' (xiangcun.baidu.com), on which it has spent roughly five million yuan on incentives. Baidu sees China's rural areas as great potential for electronic business (e-business), evidenced by the fact that revenue grew the fastest from agriculture, forestry, animals and fishery in the company's keyword promotion project, a crucial source of Baidu's total revenue. In addition to Baidu Encyclopedia, the company will scale up keyword promotion and take advantage of other products, such as Baidu Zhidao and Baidu Youa, to provide consultation, brand ad exhibitions and online network marketing/sales platform support, marketing information for rural tourism and the promotion of local products.[20]
* Baidu Search Ranking provides listings of search terms based on daily search queries entered on Baidu.com. The listings are organized by categories and allow users to locate search terms on topics of interest.
* Baidu Web Directory enables users to browse and search through websites that have been organized into categories.
* Baidu Government Information Search allows users to search various regulations, rules, notices and other information announced by People's Republic of China government entities.
* Baidu Postal Code Search enables users to search postal codes in hundreds of cities in China.
* Educational Website Search allows users to search the Websites of educational institutions. Baidu University Search allows users to search information on or browse through the Websites of specific universities in China
* Baidu Legal Search enables users to search a database that contains national and local laws and regulations, cases, legal decisions, and law dictionaries.
* Baidu Love is a query-based searchable community where registered users can write and post messages to loved ones.
* Baidu Patent Search enables users to search for specific Chinese patents and provides basic patent information in the search results, including the patent’s name, application number, filing date, issue date, inventor information and brief description of the patent.
* Baidu Games is an online channel that allows users to search or browse through game-related news and content.
* Baidu-Hexun Finance (finance.baidu.com), a financial information Website,in collaboration with Hexun.com, a financial information service provider in China with news reporting and securities consulting licenses. Users can search or browse through economic and financial news, information relating to personal wealth management and related market statistics.
* Baidu Statistics Search enables users to search statistics that have been published by the Government of the People's Republic of China
* Baidu Entertainment is an online channel for entertainment-related news and content. Users can search or browse through news and other information relating to specific stars, movies, television series and music.
* Baidu Dictionary provides users with lookup and text translation services between Chinese and English.
* Baidu Youa (youa.baidu.com), an online shopping/e-commerce platform through which businesses can sell their products and services at Baidu-registered stores.
* Baidu Desktop Search, a free, downloadable software, which enables users to search all files saved on their computer without launching a Web browser.
* Baidu Sobar, a free, downloadable software, displayed on a browser's tool bar and makes the search function available on every Web page that a user browses.
* Baidu Wireless provides various services for mobile phones, including a Chinese-input FEP for various popular operating systems including Symbian S60v5, Windows Mobile and Google Android.
* Baidu Anti-Virus offers anti-virus software products and computer virus-related news.
* Baidu Safety Center, launched in 2008, provides users with free virus scanning, system repair and online security evaluations
* Baidu Internet TV (known as Baidu Movies) allows users to search, watch and download free movies, television series, cartoons, and other programs hosted on its servers
* Chinese-language voice assistant search services for Chinese speakers visiting Japan was launched in 2008 in collaboration with Japanese personal handy-phone system operator Willcom Inc.
* discovery.baidu.com, joint venture with Discovery Communications, focusing on science, technology, space, natural history, engineering, paleontology, archaeology, history and culture.
[edit] P4P
Baidu focuses on generating revenues primarily from online marketing services. Baidu's Pay for placement (P4P) platform enables its customers to reach users who search for information related to their products or services. Customers use automated online tools to create text-based descriptions of their web pages and bid on keywords that trigger the display of their webpage information and link. Baidu's P4P platform features an automated online sign-up process that customers use to activate their accounts at any time. The P4P platform is an online marketplace that introduces Internet search users to customers who bid for priority placement in the search results. Baidu also uses third-party distributors to sell some of its online marketing services to end customers and offers discounts to these distributors in consideration of their services.
Baidu offers certain consultative services, such as keyword suggestions, account management and performance reporting. Baidu suggests synonyms and associated phrases to use as keywords or text in search listings. These suggestions can improve click-through rates of the customer's listing and increase the likelihood that a user will enter into a transaction with the customer. Baidu also provides online daily reports of the number of click throughs, clicked keywords and the total costs incurred, as well as statistical reports organized by geographic region.
[edit] ProTheme
Baidu offers ProTheme services to some of its Baidu Union members, which enable these members to display on their properties its customers' promotional links that are relevant to the subject and content of such members’ properties. Baidu generates revenues from ProTheme services based on the number of clicks on its customers' links and share the revenues with its Baidu Union members in accordance with pre-agreed terms. Baidu's fixed-ranking services allow customers to display query-sensitive text links at a designated location on its search results pages. Its Targetizement services enable customers to reach their targeted Internet users by displaying their advertisements only when their targeted Internet users browse Baidu's certain Web pages.
[edit] Baidu TV
Baidu operates its advertising service, Baidu TV, in partnership with Ads it! Media Corporation, an online advertising agency and technology company. Baidu TV provides advertisers access to the websites of its Baidu Union members, allowing advertisers to choose Websites on which they post their video advertisements with the aid of its advertisement targeting and matching system. It also offers a brand advertising service, Brand-Link. In June 2008, Baidu launched My Marketing Center, a customized platform integrating industry information, market trends and business, and industry news and reports to assist existing customers in their sales and marketing efforts. Other forms of its online advertising services allow customers to display query sensitive and non-query sensitive advertisements on its websites, including graphical advertisements.
Baidu's brand advertising feature can help the advertisers to show a branded message including images to increase brand awareness and click-through rates (up to 75%).[21]
[edit] Baidu Union
Baidu Union (union.baidu.com) consists of a number of third-party websites and software applications. Baidu Union members incorporate a Baidu search box or toolbar and match its sponsored links with the content on their properties. Their users can conduct search via the Baidu search box or toolbar and can click the sponsored links located on their properties. Baidu has also launched programs through which it displays the online advertising of its customers on Baidu Union websites, and share the fees generated by these advertisements with the owners of these Baidu Union websites.
[edit] Competition
Baidu competes with Google Hong Kong, Yahoo! China, Microsoft's Bing and MSN Messenger, Sina, Sohu's Sogou, Wikipedia, NetEase's Youdao, Tencent's Soso.com and PaiPai, Alibaba’s Taobao, TOM Online, Xunlei's Gougou and EachNet.
Baidu is the No. 1 search engine in China, controlling 63 percent of China's market share as of January 2010, according to iResearch.[22] The number of Internet users in China rose to 338 million by the end of June 2009, according to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center.[23]
In an August 2010 Wall Street Journal article,[24] Baidu has played down its benefit from Google's moving its China search service to Hong Kong, but Baidu's share of revenue in China's search—advertising market grew six percentage points in the second quarter to 70%, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.
[edit] Censorship
According to the China Digital Times, Baidu is online censor in the search arena. Documents leaked in April 2009 from an employee in Baidu's internal monitoring and censorship department show a long list of blocked websites and censored topics on Baidu search.[25]
[edit] Domain name hacked
On 12 January 2010, Baidu.com's DNS records in the United States were altered such that browsers to baidu.com were redirected to a website purporting to be the Iranian Cyber Army, thought to be behind the attack on Twitter during the 2009 Iranian election protests, making the actual site unusable for four hours.[26] Internet users were met with a page saying "This site has been attacked by Iranian Cyber Army".[27] Chinese hackers later responded by attacking Iranian websites and leaving messages.[28] Baidu later launched legal action against Register.com for gross negligence after it was revealed that Register.com's technical support staff changed the email address for Baidu.com on the request of an unnamed individual, despite their failing security verification procedures. Once the address had been changed, the individual was able to use the forgotten password feature to have Baidu's domain passwords sent directly to them, allowing them to pull off the domain hijacking.[29][30]
[edit] See also
Baidu provides an index of over 740 million web pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files.[8] Baidu offers multi-media content including MP3 music and movies, and is the first in China to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search.
Baidu proactively censors its content in line with government regulations.[9]
Many people have asked about the meaning of our name. 'Baidu' was inspired by a poem written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. '...hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.' Baidu, whose literal meaning is hundreds of times, represents persistent search for the ideal. ”
The name "Baidu" is a quote from the last line of Xin Qiji's classical poem "Green Jade Table in The Lantern Festival" saying: "Having searched for him hundreds and thousands of times in the crowd, suddenly turning back by chance, I find him there in the dimmest candlelight."
The context of the poem is that in ancient China, girls had to stay indoors and the Lantern Festival was one of the few times they could come out. In the sea and chaos of lantern lights, they would sneak away to meet their love and exchange promises to meet again next year.
A summary of the entire poem: Flowers bursting into bloom in the sky, stars falling like rain (fireworks/meteor shower), Whole streets filled with perfume, jeweled horses pulling ornate carriages, fish and dragon lanterns dancing throughout the entire night. A body decorated with golden thread and butterfly trinket, laughter that has a subtle fragrance. Having searched for this person until exhaustion, when suddenly turning back by chance, I find him standing lonely in the far end of the street in the waning light.
In 1994, Robin Li joined IDD Information Services, a New Jersey division of Dow Jones and Company, where he helped develop a software program for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal.[11] He also did work on better algorithms for search engines. He remained at IDD Information Services from May 1994 to June 1997.
In 1996, while at IDD, Li developed the RankDex site-scoring algorithm for search engines results page ranking [12][13][14] and received a US patent for the technology.[15] He later used this technology for the Baidu search engine.
Baidu offers a number of services to locate information, products and services using Chinese-language search terms, such as, search by Chinese phonetics, advanced search, snapshots, spell checker, stock quotes, news, knows, postbar, images, video and space information, and weather, train and flight schedules and other local information. The user-agent string of Baidu search engine is baiduspider.[16][17]
* Baidu Map (map.baidu.com)
* Baidu started its Japanese search service (www.baidu.jp), run by Baidu Japan, the company's first regular service outside of China. It includes a search bar for web pages and image searches, user help and advanced services.[18]
* Baidu Post Bar provides users with a query-based searchable community to exchange views and share knowledge and experiences. It is an online community bound tightly with Baidu's search service.
* Baidu News provides links to a selection of local, national and international news, and presents news stories in a searchable format, within minutes of their publication on the Web. Baidu News uses an automated process to display links to related headlines, which enables people to see many different viewpoints on the same story. Chinese government and Chinese industry sources stated that Baidu received a license from Beijing, which allows the search engine to become a full-fledged news website. Thus Baidu will be able to provide its own reports, besides showing certain results as a search engine. The company is already getting its news department ready. Baidu is the first Chinese search engine to receive such a license.[19]
* Baidu Knows provides users with a query-based searchable community to share knowledge and experience. Through Baidu Knows, registered members of Baidu Knows can post specific questions for other members to respond and also answer questions of other members.
* Baidu MP3 Search provides algorithm-generated links to songs and other multimedia files provided by Internet content providers. Baidu started with a popular music search feature called "MP3 Search" and its comprehensive lists of popular Chinese music (Baidu 500) based on download numbers. Baidu locates file formats such as MP3, WMA and SWF. The multimedia search feature is mainly used in searches for Chinese pop music. While such works are copyrighted under Chinese law, Baidu claims on its legal disclaimer that linking to these files does not break Chinese law. This has led other local search engines to follow the practice, including Google China, which uses an intermediate company called Top100 to offer a similar MP3 Search service.
* Baidu Image Search enables users to search millions of images on the Internet. Baidu Image Search offers features such as search by image size and by image file type. Image listings are organized by various categories, which are updated automatically through algorithms.
* Baidu Video Search enables users to search for and access through hyperlinks of online video clips that are hosted on third parties’ Websites.
* Baidu Space (hi.baidu.com), the social networking service of Baidu, allows registered users to create personalized homepages in a query-based searchable community. Registered users can post their Web logs, or blogs, photo album and certain personal information on their homepages and establish their own communities of friends who are also registered users. By July 2009, it had reached 100 million registered users
* Baidu Encyclopedia, is China's largest encyclopedia by users and page views/web traffic; second largest encyclopedia by article count (after Hudong).
o China Digital Village Encyclopedia in June 2009, Baidu announced it would compile the largest digital rural encyclopedia in China, according to China Securities Journal. It is expected to include 500,000 administrative villages in China, covering 80% of the total 600,000 villages in China. Baidu is creating the content of this encyclopedia largely from participants of its 'rural information competition' (xiangcun.baidu.com), on which it has spent roughly five million yuan on incentives. Baidu sees China's rural areas as great potential for electronic business (e-business), evidenced by the fact that revenue grew the fastest from agriculture, forestry, animals and fishery in the company's keyword promotion project, a crucial source of Baidu's total revenue. In addition to Baidu Encyclopedia, the company will scale up keyword promotion and take advantage of other products, such as Baidu Zhidao and Baidu Youa, to provide consultation, brand ad exhibitions and online network marketing/sales platform support, marketing information for rural tourism and the promotion of local products.[20]
* Baidu Search Ranking provides listings of search terms based on daily search queries entered on Baidu.com. The listings are organized by categories and allow users to locate search terms on topics of interest.
* Baidu Web Directory enables users to browse and search through websites that have been organized into categories.
* Baidu Government Information Search allows users to search various regulations, rules, notices and other information announced by People's Republic of China government entities.
* Baidu Postal Code Search enables users to search postal codes in hundreds of cities in China.
* Educational Website Search allows users to search the Websites of educational institutions. Baidu University Search allows users to search information on or browse through the Websites of specific universities in China
* Baidu Legal Search enables users to search a database that contains national and local laws and regulations, cases, legal decisions, and law dictionaries.
* Baidu Love is a query-based searchable community where registered users can write and post messages to loved ones.
* Baidu Patent Search enables users to search for specific Chinese patents and provides basic patent information in the search results, including the patent’s name, application number, filing date, issue date, inventor information and brief description of the patent.
* Baidu Games is an online channel that allows users to search or browse through game-related news and content.
* Baidu-Hexun Finance (finance.baidu.com), a financial information Website,in collaboration with Hexun.com, a financial information service provider in China with news reporting and securities consulting licenses. Users can search or browse through economic and financial news, information relating to personal wealth management and related market statistics.
* Baidu Statistics Search enables users to search statistics that have been published by the Government of the People's Republic of China
* Baidu Entertainment is an online channel for entertainment-related news and content. Users can search or browse through news and other information relating to specific stars, movies, television series and music.
* Baidu Dictionary provides users with lookup and text translation services between Chinese and English.
* Baidu Youa (youa.baidu.com), an online shopping/e-commerce platform through which businesses can sell their products and services at Baidu-registered stores.
* Baidu Desktop Search, a free, downloadable software, which enables users to search all files saved on their computer without launching a Web browser.
* Baidu Sobar, a free, downloadable software, displayed on a browser's tool bar and makes the search function available on every Web page that a user browses.
* Baidu Wireless provides various services for mobile phones, including a Chinese-input FEP for various popular operating systems including Symbian S60v5, Windows Mobile and Google Android.
* Baidu Anti-Virus offers anti-virus software products and computer virus-related news.
* Baidu Safety Center, launched in 2008, provides users with free virus scanning, system repair and online security evaluations
* Baidu Internet TV (known as Baidu Movies) allows users to search, watch and download free movies, television series, cartoons, and other programs hosted on its servers
* Chinese-language voice assistant search services for Chinese speakers visiting Japan was launched in 2008 in collaboration with Japanese personal handy-phone system operator Willcom Inc.
* discovery.baidu.com, joint venture with Discovery Communications, focusing on science, technology, space, natural history, engineering, paleontology, archaeology, history and culture.
[edit] P4P
Baidu focuses on generating revenues primarily from online marketing services. Baidu's Pay for placement (P4P) platform enables its customers to reach users who search for information related to their products or services. Customers use automated online tools to create text-based descriptions of their web pages and bid on keywords that trigger the display of their webpage information and link. Baidu's P4P platform features an automated online sign-up process that customers use to activate their accounts at any time. The P4P platform is an online marketplace that introduces Internet search users to customers who bid for priority placement in the search results. Baidu also uses third-party distributors to sell some of its online marketing services to end customers and offers discounts to these distributors in consideration of their services.
Baidu offers certain consultative services, such as keyword suggestions, account management and performance reporting. Baidu suggests synonyms and associated phrases to use as keywords or text in search listings. These suggestions can improve click-through rates of the customer's listing and increase the likelihood that a user will enter into a transaction with the customer. Baidu also provides online daily reports of the number of click throughs, clicked keywords and the total costs incurred, as well as statistical reports organized by geographic region.
[edit] ProTheme
Baidu offers ProTheme services to some of its Baidu Union members, which enable these members to display on their properties its customers' promotional links that are relevant to the subject and content of such members’ properties. Baidu generates revenues from ProTheme services based on the number of clicks on its customers' links and share the revenues with its Baidu Union members in accordance with pre-agreed terms. Baidu's fixed-ranking services allow customers to display query-sensitive text links at a designated location on its search results pages. Its Targetizement services enable customers to reach their targeted Internet users by displaying their advertisements only when their targeted Internet users browse Baidu's certain Web pages.
[edit] Baidu TV
Baidu operates its advertising service, Baidu TV, in partnership with Ads it! Media Corporation, an online advertising agency and technology company. Baidu TV provides advertisers access to the websites of its Baidu Union members, allowing advertisers to choose Websites on which they post their video advertisements with the aid of its advertisement targeting and matching system. It also offers a brand advertising service, Brand-Link. In June 2008, Baidu launched My Marketing Center, a customized platform integrating industry information, market trends and business, and industry news and reports to assist existing customers in their sales and marketing efforts. Other forms of its online advertising services allow customers to display query sensitive and non-query sensitive advertisements on its websites, including graphical advertisements.
Baidu's brand advertising feature can help the advertisers to show a branded message including images to increase brand awareness and click-through rates (up to 75%).[21]
[edit] Baidu Union
Baidu Union (union.baidu.com) consists of a number of third-party websites and software applications. Baidu Union members incorporate a Baidu search box or toolbar and match its sponsored links with the content on their properties. Their users can conduct search via the Baidu search box or toolbar and can click the sponsored links located on their properties. Baidu has also launched programs through which it displays the online advertising of its customers on Baidu Union websites, and share the fees generated by these advertisements with the owners of these Baidu Union websites.
[edit] Competition
Baidu competes with Google Hong Kong, Yahoo! China, Microsoft's Bing and MSN Messenger, Sina, Sohu's Sogou, Wikipedia, NetEase's Youdao, Tencent's Soso.com and PaiPai, Alibaba’s Taobao, TOM Online, Xunlei's Gougou and EachNet.
Baidu is the No. 1 search engine in China, controlling 63 percent of China's market share as of January 2010, according to iResearch.[22] The number of Internet users in China rose to 338 million by the end of June 2009, according to a report by the China Internet Network Information Center.[23]
In an August 2010 Wall Street Journal article,[24] Baidu has played down its benefit from Google's moving its China search service to Hong Kong, but Baidu's share of revenue in China's search—advertising market grew six percentage points in the second quarter to 70%, according to Beijing-based research firm Analysys International.
[edit] Censorship
According to the China Digital Times, Baidu is online censor in the search arena. Documents leaked in April 2009 from an employee in Baidu's internal monitoring and censorship department show a long list of blocked websites and censored topics on Baidu search.[25]
[edit] Domain name hacked
On 12 January 2010, Baidu.com's DNS records in the United States were altered such that browsers to baidu.com were redirected to a website purporting to be the Iranian Cyber Army, thought to be behind the attack on Twitter during the 2009 Iranian election protests, making the actual site unusable for four hours.[26] Internet users were met with a page saying "This site has been attacked by Iranian Cyber Army".[27] Chinese hackers later responded by attacking Iranian websites and leaving messages.[28] Baidu later launched legal action against Register.com for gross negligence after it was revealed that Register.com's technical support staff changed the email address for Baidu.com on the request of an unnamed individual, despite their failing security verification procedures. Once the address had been changed, the individual was able to use the forgotten password feature to have Baidu's domain passwords sent directly to them, allowing them to pull off the domain hijacking.[29][30]
[edit] See also
Monday, January 3, 2011
AltaVista
AltaVista
AltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google. Yahoo currently plans on discontinuing AltaVista, as it is underperforming.[1]
AltaVista was created by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation's Western Research Laboratory who were trying to provide services to make finding files on the public network easier.[2] Although there is some dispute about who was responsible for the original idea,[3] two key participants were Louis Monier, who wrote the crawler, and Michael Burrows, who wrote the indexer. The name AltaVista was chosen in relation to the surroundings of their company at Palo Alto. AltaVista was publicly launched as an internet search engine on 15 December 1995 at altavista.digital.com.[4][5]
At launch, the service had two innovations which set it ahead of the other search engines; It used a fast, multi-threaded crawler (Scooter) which could cover many more Web pages than were believed to exist at the time and an efficient search running back-end on advanced hardware. As of 1998, it used 20 multi-processor machines using DEC's 64-bit Alpha processor. Together, the back-end machines had 130 GB of RAM and 500 GB of hard disk space, and received 13 million queries per day.[6] This made AltaVista the first searchable, full-text database of a large part of the World Wide Web. The distinguishing feature of AltaVista was its minimalistic interface compared with other search engines of the time; a feature which was lost when it became a portal, but was regained when it refocused its efforts on its search function.
AltaVista's site was an immediate success. Traffic increased steadily from 300,000 hits on the first day to more than 80 million hits a day two years later. The ability to search the web, and AltaVista's service in particular, became the subject of numerous articles and even some books.[2] AltaVista itself became one of the top destinations on the web, and by 1997 would earn US$50 million in sponsorship revenue.[3]
In 1996, AltaVista became the exclusive provider of search results for Yahoo!. In 1998, Digital was sold to Compaq and in 1999, Compaq redesigned AltaVista as a web portal, hoping to compete with Yahoo!. Under CEO Rod Schrock, AltaVista abandoned its streamlined search page and focused on features like shopping and free email.[7] In June 1998, Compaq paid AltaVista Technology Incorporated ("ATI") $3.3 million for the domain name altavista.com – Jack Marshall, cofounder of ATI, had registered the name in 1994.
In June 1999, Compaq sold a majority stake in AltaVista to CMGI, an internet investment company.[8] CMGI filed for an initial public offering for AltaVista to take place in April 2000, but as the internet bubble collapsed, the IPO was cancelled.[9] Meanwhile, it became clear that AltaVista's portal strategy was unsuccessful, and the search service began losing market share, especially to Google. After a series of layoffs and several management changes, AltaVista gradually shed its portal features and refocused on search. By 2002, AltaVista had improved the quality and freshness of its results and redesigned its user interface.[10]
In February 2003, AltaVista was bought by Overture Services, Inc.[11] In July 2003, Overture itself was taken over by Yahoo!.[12]
In December of 2010, a Yahoo employee leaked PowerPoint slides that the search engine would be shut down as part of a consolidation at Yahoo [13].
AltaVista provides a free translation service, branded Babel Fish, which automatically translates text between several languages. In May 2008, this service was re-branded as a part of Yahoo!.
AltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google. Yahoo currently plans on discontinuing AltaVista, as it is underperforming.[1]
AltaVista was created by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation's Western Research Laboratory who were trying to provide services to make finding files on the public network easier.[2] Although there is some dispute about who was responsible for the original idea,[3] two key participants were Louis Monier, who wrote the crawler, and Michael Burrows, who wrote the indexer. The name AltaVista was chosen in relation to the surroundings of their company at Palo Alto. AltaVista was publicly launched as an internet search engine on 15 December 1995 at altavista.digital.com.[4][5]
At launch, the service had two innovations which set it ahead of the other search engines; It used a fast, multi-threaded crawler (Scooter) which could cover many more Web pages than were believed to exist at the time and an efficient search running back-end on advanced hardware. As of 1998, it used 20 multi-processor machines using DEC's 64-bit Alpha processor. Together, the back-end machines had 130 GB of RAM and 500 GB of hard disk space, and received 13 million queries per day.[6] This made AltaVista the first searchable, full-text database of a large part of the World Wide Web. The distinguishing feature of AltaVista was its minimalistic interface compared with other search engines of the time; a feature which was lost when it became a portal, but was regained when it refocused its efforts on its search function.
AltaVista's site was an immediate success. Traffic increased steadily from 300,000 hits on the first day to more than 80 million hits a day two years later. The ability to search the web, and AltaVista's service in particular, became the subject of numerous articles and even some books.[2] AltaVista itself became one of the top destinations on the web, and by 1997 would earn US$50 million in sponsorship revenue.[3]
In 1996, AltaVista became the exclusive provider of search results for Yahoo!. In 1998, Digital was sold to Compaq and in 1999, Compaq redesigned AltaVista as a web portal, hoping to compete with Yahoo!. Under CEO Rod Schrock, AltaVista abandoned its streamlined search page and focused on features like shopping and free email.[7] In June 1998, Compaq paid AltaVista Technology Incorporated ("ATI") $3.3 million for the domain name altavista.com – Jack Marshall, cofounder of ATI, had registered the name in 1994.
In June 1999, Compaq sold a majority stake in AltaVista to CMGI, an internet investment company.[8] CMGI filed for an initial public offering for AltaVista to take place in April 2000, but as the internet bubble collapsed, the IPO was cancelled.[9] Meanwhile, it became clear that AltaVista's portal strategy was unsuccessful, and the search service began losing market share, especially to Google. After a series of layoffs and several management changes, AltaVista gradually shed its portal features and refocused on search. By 2002, AltaVista had improved the quality and freshness of its results and redesigned its user interface.[10]
In February 2003, AltaVista was bought by Overture Services, Inc.[11] In July 2003, Overture itself was taken over by Yahoo!.[12]
In December of 2010, a Yahoo employee leaked PowerPoint slides that the search engine would be shut down as part of a consolidation at Yahoo [13].
AltaVista provides a free translation service, branded Babel Fish, which automatically translates text between several languages. In May 2008, this service was re-branded as a part of Yahoo!.
AlltheWeb
AlltheWeb
AlltheWeb is an Internet search engine that made its debut in mid-1999. It grew out of FTP Search, Tor Egge's doctorate thesis at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, which he started in 1994, which in turn resulted in the formation of Fast Search and Transfer, established on July 16, 1997.[1] It was used primarily as a showpiece site for FAST's enterprise search engine. Although at one time rivaling Google in size and technology,[2] AlltheWeb never became as popular.
When AlltheWeb started in 1999, Fast Search and Transfer aimed to provide their database to other search engines, copying the successful case of Inktomi. Indeed, in January 2000, Lycos used their results in the Lycos PRO search. By that time, the AlltheWeb database had grown from 80 million URIs to 200 million. Their aim was to index all the publicly-accessible web. Their crawler indexed over 2 billion pages by June 2002[2] and started a fresh round of the search engine size war. Before their purchase by Yahoo!, the database contained about 3.3 billion URIs.
AlltheWeb had a few advantages over Google, such as a fresher database, more advanced search features, search clustering and a completely customizable look.[2][3][4] In February 2003 Fast's web search division was bought by Overture. In March 2004 Overture itself was taken over by Yahoo!. Shortly after Yahoo!'s acquisition, the AlltheWeb site started using Yahoo!'s database and some of the advanced features were removed, such as FTP search.
AlltheWeb is an Internet search engine that made its debut in mid-1999. It grew out of FTP Search, Tor Egge's doctorate thesis at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, which he started in 1994, which in turn resulted in the formation of Fast Search and Transfer, established on July 16, 1997.[1] It was used primarily as a showpiece site for FAST's enterprise search engine. Although at one time rivaling Google in size and technology,[2] AlltheWeb never became as popular.
When AlltheWeb started in 1999, Fast Search and Transfer aimed to provide their database to other search engines, copying the successful case of Inktomi. Indeed, in January 2000, Lycos used their results in the Lycos PRO search. By that time, the AlltheWeb database had grown from 80 million URIs to 200 million. Their aim was to index all the publicly-accessible web. Their crawler indexed over 2 billion pages by June 2002[2] and started a fresh round of the search engine size war. Before their purchase by Yahoo!, the database contained about 3.3 billion URIs.
AlltheWeb had a few advantages over Google, such as a fresher database, more advanced search features, search clustering and a completely customizable look.[2][3][4] In February 2003 Fast's web search division was bought by Overture. In March 2004 Overture itself was taken over by Yahoo!. Shortly after Yahoo!'s acquisition, the AlltheWeb site started using Yahoo!'s database and some of the advanced features were removed, such as FTP search.
Aliweb
Aliweb
ALIWEB (Archie Like Indexing for the WEB) is considered the first Web search engine, as its predecessors were either built with different purposes (the Wanderer, Gopher) or were literally just indexers (Archie, Veronica and Jughead).
First announced in November 1993[1] by developer Martijn Koster, and presented in May 1994[2] at the First International Conference on the World Wide Web at CERN in Geneva, ALIWEB preceded WebCrawler by several months.[3]
ALIWEB allowed users to submit the locations of index files on their sites[3][4] which enabled the search engine to include webpages and add user-written page descriptions and keywords. This empowered webmasters to define the terms that would lead users to their pages, and also avoided setting bots (e.g. the Wanderer, JumpStation) which used up bandwidth. As relatively few people submitted their sites, ALIWEB was not very widely used.
Martijn Koster, who was also instrumental in the creation of the Robots Exclusion Standard,[5][6] detailed the background and objectives of ALIWEB with an overview of its functions and framework in the paper he presented at CERN.[2]
Koster is not associated with a commercial website which uses the aliweb name.[7]
ALIWEB (Archie Like Indexing for the WEB) is considered the first Web search engine, as its predecessors were either built with different purposes (the Wanderer, Gopher) or were literally just indexers (Archie, Veronica and Jughead).
First announced in November 1993[1] by developer Martijn Koster, and presented in May 1994[2] at the First International Conference on the World Wide Web at CERN in Geneva, ALIWEB preceded WebCrawler by several months.[3]
ALIWEB allowed users to submit the locations of index files on their sites[3][4] which enabled the search engine to include webpages and add user-written page descriptions and keywords. This empowered webmasters to define the terms that would lead users to their pages, and also avoided setting bots (e.g. the Wanderer, JumpStation) which used up bandwidth. As relatively few people submitted their sites, ALIWEB was not very widely used.
Martijn Koster, who was also instrumental in the creation of the Robots Exclusion Standard,[5][6] detailed the background and objectives of ALIWEB with an overview of its functions and framework in the paper he presented at CERN.[2]
Koster is not associated with a commercial website which uses the aliweb name.[7]
A9.com
A9.com
A9.com is a subsidiary of Amazon.com based in Palo Alto, California that develops search engine technology. A9 currently has over 100 employees in its Palo Alto, Bangalore, and Dublin offices.
A9 has worked in 3 areas over the years.
* The Amazon Product Search department was moved to A9 in 2003.
* ClickRiver is an advertising program for service providers.
* As a research facility in many areas of search, the a9.com website teams have come out with innovations such as OpenSearch.
A9 Product Search is responsible for the search engine driving the shopping experience for Amazon.com and its partners. Sites such as Target, Marks & Spencers and Endless also use the same platform. The search engine serves the search boxes, the category browsing experience, searching within books, and the Look Inside feature of searching through pages.
Clickriver is a portal that allows advertisers to easily advertise on Amazon.com. The interface is similar to Google's AdWords.
A9.com, which went live on April 14, 2004, is an Internet search engine from Amazon.com. Its results derive from Bing, supplemented by Alexa, Amazon.com, and other engines for specific search types.[1]
A9 has many features which many popular search engines lack. In addition to generic web searching, A9 has the ability to search the book results from Amazon.com that include "Search Inside the Book" (as long as a user registers with Amazon.com). Its interface allows users to combine search results together, allowing side by side comparison of results.
A9.com makes use of various search engines for specific uses:
* Bing performs general web and news searching (from April 14, 2004 to April 30, 2006 Google performed general web and image searching)
* Alexa provides "site info" for general web searches
* Amazon.com Product Search offers "Search Inside the Book"
* Answers.com looks up reference databases
* Wikipedia (via Answers.com) for encyclopedia entries
* Zoominfo for people summaries
* IceRocket blog search
* The Internet Movie Database offers movie searching
Over 400 additional search services can be added.
The release of A9 was met with some controversy, since it records all of a user's searches and links them to the person's Amazon.com account. A9's privacy statement says:
"We may, from time-to-time, employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples include sending e-mail and analyzing data. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes."
Some have speculated that A9.com will use data mining for targeted advertising (similar to Gmail). People worried about their privacy can use Generic A9, which does not record personal information.
In January 2005, A9.com added its "BlockView" feature to the Yellow Pages and Maps searches, allowing users to view photos of businesses on many streets in over 24 major U.S. cities after searching for a business name in that city (as of January 2006). Users can also scroll up and down the street view (i.e., up and down the block, hence the name of the feature) in order to see images of other nearby businesses and the areas surrounding them. A9.com planned to continually add new images from a large number of U.S. cities, however the company is no longer offering BlockView to the public.
On September 29, 2006 Amazon discontinued several of the components of A9, including A9 Instant Reward, the A9 Toolbar, A9 Yellow Pages, A9 Maps (including Block View), as well as all other personalization features including the diary, bookmarks, and history.[2]
As a result of the cutback the support for OpenSearch was moved to a community process at OpenSearch.org.
As of February 2010 the standalone A9 search engine has now disappeared. A9 is now a specialist technology firm supplying solutions to e-commerce sites, especially Amazon.com.
A9.com is a subsidiary of Amazon.com based in Palo Alto, California that develops search engine technology. A9 currently has over 100 employees in its Palo Alto, Bangalore, and Dublin offices.
A9 has worked in 3 areas over the years.
* The Amazon Product Search department was moved to A9 in 2003.
* ClickRiver is an advertising program for service providers.
* As a research facility in many areas of search, the a9.com website teams have come out with innovations such as OpenSearch.
A9 Product Search is responsible for the search engine driving the shopping experience for Amazon.com and its partners. Sites such as Target, Marks & Spencers and Endless also use the same platform. The search engine serves the search boxes, the category browsing experience, searching within books, and the Look Inside feature of searching through pages.
Clickriver is a portal that allows advertisers to easily advertise on Amazon.com. The interface is similar to Google's AdWords.
A9.com, which went live on April 14, 2004, is an Internet search engine from Amazon.com. Its results derive from Bing, supplemented by Alexa, Amazon.com, and other engines for specific search types.[1]
A9 has many features which many popular search engines lack. In addition to generic web searching, A9 has the ability to search the book results from Amazon.com that include "Search Inside the Book" (as long as a user registers with Amazon.com). Its interface allows users to combine search results together, allowing side by side comparison of results.
A9.com makes use of various search engines for specific uses:
* Bing performs general web and news searching (from April 14, 2004 to April 30, 2006 Google performed general web and image searching)
* Alexa provides "site info" for general web searches
* Amazon.com Product Search offers "Search Inside the Book"
* Answers.com looks up reference databases
* Wikipedia (via Answers.com) for encyclopedia entries
* Zoominfo for people summaries
* IceRocket blog search
* The Internet Movie Database offers movie searching
Over 400 additional search services can be added.
The release of A9 was met with some controversy, since it records all of a user's searches and links them to the person's Amazon.com account. A9's privacy statement says:
"We may, from time-to-time, employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Examples include sending e-mail and analyzing data. They have access to personal information needed to perform their functions, but may not use it for other purposes."
Some have speculated that A9.com will use data mining for targeted advertising (similar to Gmail). People worried about their privacy can use Generic A9, which does not record personal information.
In January 2005, A9.com added its "BlockView" feature to the Yellow Pages and Maps searches, allowing users to view photos of businesses on many streets in over 24 major U.S. cities after searching for a business name in that city (as of January 2006). Users can also scroll up and down the street view (i.e., up and down the block, hence the name of the feature) in order to see images of other nearby businesses and the areas surrounding them. A9.com planned to continually add new images from a large number of U.S. cities, however the company is no longer offering BlockView to the public.
On September 29, 2006 Amazon discontinued several of the components of A9, including A9 Instant Reward, the A9 Toolbar, A9 Yellow Pages, A9 Maps (including Block View), as well as all other personalization features including the diary, bookmarks, and history.[2]
As a result of the cutback the support for OpenSearch was moved to a community process at OpenSearch.org.
As of February 2010 the standalone A9 search engine has now disappeared. A9 is now a specialist technology firm supplying solutions to e-commerce sites, especially Amazon.com.
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