3 ms·

WolframAlpha, Cuil, and Search Wikia got a lot more press than just from "rinky-dink[y] tech blog[s]."

tokenadult 17y ago
Too bad so much of Cuil's press was about the failure of its launch. WolframAlpha is a good way to get most of the functionality of Mathematica for free, but for many informational searches Google still easily beats it. What's the advantage of Search Wikia over Google?
- epi0Bauqu 17y ago
  Search Wikia is dead. It allowed random people to edit search results, like Wikipedia or Wikia does for articles.
vaksel 17y ago
which kinda proves the point...all that press, and noone cares about them now. The only recent launch is bing...but even that started out with millions of original microsoft users and then was fueled by a marketing budget bigger than a small country's GDP.
- epi0Bauqu 17y ago
  The OC's point was that Google didn't and shouldn't have responded to Cuil, Wolfram Alpha or Search Wikia because they were only covered by small tech blogs. Both are wrong and them flaming out doesn't prove his point. They flamed out because they weren't sticky with users, but it wasn't for lack of original coverage or eyeballs. IIRC, Cuil managed to get covered in pretty much every major news outlet, which converted into about 3M uniques on their first day! As I alluded to in the post (and better described in the posts I linked to), Google did their best to take the wind out of their sales with timely released and announced features (longer snippets, bigger index, in this case). In retrospect, it seems that they were going to (at least initially) fail on their own, but Google didn't know that at the time. And the point is that they were paying attention and responding. They took the competitive threat seriously, as I think they should.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  And look what that got them, the traffic that bing receives is just about equal to the gain that google made since bings launch [1]. Maybe it's too early to write them off, but I would have expected a better showing by now. It's a real pity because I would have liked to see some real competition in the search field. [1] figures from 'alexa', take with grain of salt etc.

Too bad so much of Cuil's press was about the failure of its launch. WolframAlpha is a good way to get most of the functionality of Mathematica for free, but for many informational searches Google still easily beats it. What's the advantage of Search Wikia over Google?

epi0Bauqu 17y ago
Search Wikia is dead. It allowed random people to edit search results, like Wikipedia or Wikia does for articles.

vaksel 17y ago

which kinda proves the point...all that press, and noone cares about them now. The only recent launch is bing...but even that started out with millions of original microsoft users and then was fueled by a marketing budget bigger than a small country's GDP.

epi0Bauqu 17y ago
The OC's point was that Google didn't and shouldn't have responded to Cuil, Wolfram Alpha or Search Wikia because they were only covered by small tech blogs. Both are wrong and them flaming out doesn't prove his point. They flamed out because they weren't sticky with users, but it wasn't for lack of original coverage or eyeballs. IIRC, Cuil managed to get covered in pretty much every major news outlet, which converted into about 3M uniques on their first day! As I alluded to in the post (and better described in the posts I linked to), Google did their best to take the wind out of their sales with timely released and announced features (longer snippets, bigger index, in this case). In retrospect, it seems that they were going to (at least initially) fail on their own, but Google didn't know that at the time. And the point is that they were paying attention and responding. They took the competitive threat seriously, as I think they should.
jacquesm 17y ago
And look what that got them, the traffic that bing receives is just about equal to the gain that google made since bings launch [1]. Maybe it's too early to write them off, but I would have expected a better showing by now. It's a real pity because I would have liked to see some real competition in the search field. [1] figures from 'alexa', take with grain of salt etc.