Is Google Looking to Tuck in a Search Startup?
| A handful of search engines are making their debut or introducing new products here, in Palm Desert, Calif., at Demo 08 this week: Circos.com, Delver (formerly Semingo), HealthPricer, Silobreaker, Jodange and Eyealike, all of whom have varying degrees of attractiveness to Google. I believe some have more appeal than others. |
<p>Circos.com is a social search application that gauges the content of each search and prioritizes results based on users' preferences and needs. Such a hive-mind-oriented technology could help Google better target ads for users.
<p>Would it fit with the math-based approach Google espouses? Maybe, but while Yahoo is socializing search, I haven't seen any inclination by the company to stray from its bread-and-butter.
<p>Then there's Delver, also a social search product that lets users find content and people within your own network, by indexing social networks, blogs and apps like Flickr and YouTube, interfaces that content with your own social graph and delivers targeted results.
<p>This could be a slamdunk both internally and externally for Google, which could use the Delver technology to support OpenSocial-based sites.
<p>HealthPricer seems tailor-made for Google. It's a health product search information search service. Google is launching Google Health this year and has invested a lot of time and resources in this area. HealthPricer CEO Michael Brown said "Health is the next big search area on the Web." HealthPricer's assets could dovetail well with Google's Health Plans.
<p>Silobreaker meanwhile is a search and aggregation service for news, which sounds like a dime a dozen until you learn that it is trained to recognize people, companies and topics, puts them in context and allows users to see what is getting the most attention in news. Google could acquire this technology to get more insight from its Google News offering.
<p>Along the analytical lines, Jodange's Toms search software is another possibility, isolating people's opinions about topics to let users know who is most worth listening to. <p>This would fit in with Google's enterprise search products, appealing to financial and retail analysts. Interesting technology, but a little nichey. When Google goes nichey, it tends to be for consumers.
<p>I'd be surprised if Google alighted on Eyealike, which just launched some pretty darn accurate software that detects copyrighted copy in user-generated content. That comes after YouTube unveiled its own tool to weed out such content. Too much overlap?
Perhaps, but Eyealike's Copyright software is supported by the company's Visual Search Platform, which lets social networking site users search video and other pictures for content.
<p>Unless you count Orkut, Google doesn't really have its own social network, so I'd be surprised if Google made a move for this startup when the social search and health guys seem to have no overlaps.
<p>Winner: HealthPricer. It's too germane to what Google is doing to not be, and as sexy as the social search stuff is, there is no clear picture of how Google might leverage those assets to better serve consumers.
