Can the Search Engine Be Better than Google?
Google is keeping a close eye on a small, suburban Melbourne start-up that claims to be developing a search engine that improves on the world leader.
MyLiveSearch, which plans to go live as a public beta in a few weeks, is the brainchild of self-taught software developer Rob Gabriel.
Mr Gabriel, 35, says his search engine gives better, more relevant results than the search king because it is a truly “live” search.
Google’s search engine works by building a vast index of web pages, via automated “spiders” that crawl through billions of web pages a year. However this represents only a fraction of the enormous, sprawling internet, and the index can never be entirely up to date.
Yahoo! search and (despite its name) Microsoft’s Live search work the same way.
MyLiveSearch is fundamentally different. It works through a small browser plug-in. The search terms are put through Google, or other indexed search databases, but those results are treated as “starting points” alongside the user’s bookmarks and other popular web hubs.
From there, the live search takes over, crawling through hundreds of web pages connected to those starting points in search of more information relevant to the search.
Mr Gabriel says the results come back in seconds, and are almost always richer, more detailed and more useful than a standard, index-based search. His product can also search the so-called “invisible web” of dynamically-generated web pages that search engines have trouble indexing.
“This has the potential to change the way people search the internet,” he said. “Google can’t search every page every day (to build its index). The web is so dynamic and changes so often - MyLiveSearch turns your own computer into a ’super-spider’ to search it in real time.
“This technology could be snapped onto any of the major search engines and improve them.”
A Google business development representative has met with the MyLiveSearch team at least twice - once when the technology was at a very early stage, and again last week after Next made inquiries about Google’s interest in the project.
Google did not want to comment on MyLiveSearch, except in general terms.
“We’re really keen to support Australian developers and IT entrepreneurs,” spokesman Rob Shilkin said. “Google Maps was a small Aussie start-up. And Google itself started as two guys in a garage.”
The company has a history of acquiring technology that might help a competitor. In April last year Google bought the rights to an advanced text-search algorithm invented by University of NSW student Ori Allon. Mr Allon, 26, was given a job at Google’s headquarters at Mountain View, California.
Google - (Google, Mountain View, CA, www.google.com) The largest search engine on the Web, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford University students. In 1996, they developed their “BackRub” search engine, named after its unique page ranking method (explained below). With investments from Sun founder Andy Bechtolsheim and others, the company was founded in September 1998, and BackRub was launched as the Google search engine in 1999.
Google acquired the Usenet discussion groups from Deja.com in 2001 and renamed them Google Groups. In 2006, Google surprised everyone by acquiring YouTube, the most popular video sharing site on the Web. See Usenet, Deja.com and YouTube.
In addition to search, Google offers a variety of applications that until 2007 were all offered free for the user, including e-mail, desktop search, word processing, spreadsheets and image editing. In 2007, Google combined its business applications into both free and paid packages (see Google Apps). See Gmail, Google Desktop Search, Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Picasa.
MyLiveSearch - My Live Search is the first, true ‘real-time’ search engine to appear on the www. It is the only engine that searches the www live to the second. Results are not retrieved from an indexed database as is with all other search engines, which are days, weeks or months old.
Information is only as valuable as it happens and this is the underlying philosophy of its founders to develop a tool, the first of its kind, to give its users the power, scope and most of all, live information on the www.
This technology has been in development for the past 8 years with the team currently based in Melbourne, Australia. A dedicated team of innovative developers delivering the latest cutting edge technology in ‘real-time’ search within a new paradigm on how we search the www today.
A totally new and innovative approach to searching the web, which has not been done before, until now!