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Guess I always assumed Algolia wasn't anything special. Anyone know what exactly makes it worth so much?

BjoernKW 9y ago
They are one of the very few companies in that space which still develop their own search technology instead of just adopting and mixing available open source packages. Most other search software these days runs on some flavour of Lucene and rightfully so IMO because Lucene is a rock solid piece of software. This means that creating a defensible USP in that space isn't easy. Algolia did it by essentially developing their own search software from the ground up. It isn't necessarily better than competitors like Elasticsearch in every measure but it certainly has some interesting properties and it can be pretty fast, especially for things like autocomplete.
- pcsanwald 9y ago
  plus, from the reading I did, the founders have been working in the search space for a long time and really seem to know what they're doing. Lucene is great, but, it does have limitations: tough to embed in non-JVM applications and poor support for tokenizing things like emojis are two immediate things that come to mind. Elasticsearch is maybe my favorite data storage product in the last 15 years, but the Algolia folks have taken a different approach that is also quite interesting.
  - rpedela 9y ago
    Can you expand on emoji tokenization? I don't understand what you mean?
    - pcsanwald 9y ago
      the lucene standard tokenizer doesn't offer support for tokenizing emojis: it strips them out. I'm not aware of any lucene tokenizer that does support emojis tokenization. This isn't a huge deal, as lucene is open source and tokenizers can be written, but I'm just highlighting it as a shortcoming that's illustrative of the time and place lucene evolved from.
- zigzigzag 9y ago
  Are you sure? I thought Algolia literally was Solr (which is ElasticSearch which is Lucene).
  - BjoernKW 9y ago
    Yes, I'm sure. I talked to one of the founders about 2 years ago. Algolia is written in C / C++ from the ground up.
  - pcsanwald 9y ago
    your comment is a bit confusing: both Solr and ElasticSearch are built on top of Lucene. Algolia is _not_ built on top of lucene at all.
colept 9y ago
It works well and works fast. Indexes are easy to setup, maintain, and SDK's support a variety of languages. Querying is fast enough to feel seamless.
searchtaway 9y ago
I would say it is the libraries in various languages and ui helpers integrated with their engine. We have been working on a more flexible alternative with additional features and also have a few current Algolia customers who are trying it in beta. The number one feedback has been how easy it is to get started with Algolia..

They are one of the very few companies in that space which still develop their own search technology instead of just adopting and mixing available open source packages. Most other search software these days runs on some flavour of Lucene and rightfully so IMO because Lucene is a rock solid piece of software. This means that creating a defensible USP in that space isn't easy. Algolia did it by essentially developing their own search software from the ground up. It isn't necessarily better than competitors like Elasticsearch in every measure but it certainly has some interesting properties and it can be pretty fast, especially for things like autocomplete.

pcsanwald 9y ago
plus, from the reading I did, the founders have been working in the search space for a long time and really seem to know what they're doing. Lucene is great, but, it does have limitations: tough to embed in non-JVM applications and poor support for tokenizing things like emojis are two immediate things that come to mind. Elasticsearch is maybe my favorite data storage product in the last 15 years, but the Algolia folks have taken a different approach that is also quite interesting.
- rpedela 9y ago
  Can you expand on emoji tokenization? I don't understand what you mean?
  - pcsanwald 9y ago
    the lucene standard tokenizer doesn't offer support for tokenizing emojis: it strips them out. I'm not aware of any lucene tokenizer that does support emojis tokenization. This isn't a huge deal, as lucene is open source and tokenizers can be written, but I'm just highlighting it as a shortcoming that's illustrative of the time and place lucene evolved from.
zigzigzag 9y ago
Are you sure? I thought Algolia literally was Solr (which is ElasticSearch which is Lucene).
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  Yes, I'm sure. I talked to one of the founders about 2 years ago. Algolia is written in C / C++ from the ground up.
- pcsanwald 9y ago
  your comment is a bit confusing: both Solr and ElasticSearch are built on top of Lucene. Algolia is _not_ built on top of lucene at all.

colept 9y ago

It works well and works fast. Indexes are easy to setup, maintain, and SDK's support a variety of languages. Querying is fast enough to feel seamless.

searchtaway 9y ago

I would say it is the libraries in various languages and ui helpers integrated with their engine. We have been working on a more flexible alternative with additional features and also have a few current Algolia customers who are trying it in beta. The number one feedback has been how easy it is to get started with Algolia..