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Bad Search Ideas And People Backing Them
By Daya Baran at November 15, 2007 9 Comments
ChaCha, a human powered search engine that plans to take on Google has raised US$10 million. Mike Arrington, test drove it. He concluded that the human powered search guides weren’t particularly knowledgeable about the web. He searched for the UK equivalent of Digg and and human guide responded “What is Digg?”.
Mike, concludes that “ChaCha is a bad idea … poorly executed. In a sea of dumb startup ideas, ChaCha stands apart as more awful than just about all of the rest.”
Another such company is Powerset, when I met with the VCs at Mayfield Fund several years ago, they said investing in search would be a bad idea. They were actually clueless about the space. However, after the Google IPO, they funded Powerset and now they are claiming to have become experts in search. This happened with another of their startups called “JotSpot” that was going to take on Google - which eventually got sold to Google. Today, Powerset is in trouble (aside from the fact that it is a bad idea), Mayfield has no expertise in search. They are simple opportunists trying to make a quick buck on the Google craze by hoping to sell to Google again.
Labels: Search
9 Comments
I wouldn’t say powerset is a bad search engine. They’re creating a search engine as an application for their natural language recognition which is a precursor for some pretty powerful AI uses.
Using humans to refine human queries seems like an odd approach.
However I was optimistic about Powerset because some early testing showed “better than Google” results. I’m now wondering if those were cherry picked results or if the problem is that Powerset can’t scale up properly. IBM Web Fountain, for Example, is probably the best engine, but it’s too computationally intense to be any good for the web.
Mayfield did NOT invest in Powerset although Pell was an Entrepreneur in Residence there before he founded the company.
Long overdue for someone to kick Google’s a$$, though I doubt that would be Cha-Cha, Powerset or Mahalo.
The dominance of Google is a threat to everyone in Internet industry. This is Microsoft 2.0 with no qualms about stepping on anyone.
But on the bright side GOOG will likely get less aggressive as early employees vest and check out.
Mayfield sucks. Raj Kapoor, does not even know how to run a business. He sank Snapfish into the ground - now he is going to tell entrepreneurs how to build and run business. Screw up!
Jotspot! OMG Kraus is the guy that turned Larry and Serge down saying “Who needs another search engine!”. Now he is working at Google as a product manager - Mayfield funded this fool too. Bunch of fools.
birds of a feather - vcs suck (most at least)
how about the other idiot from Mayfield Champath that ape is at Facebook now - and they are hiring smart people?
Surely a quick search of something like “digg uk” would bring a UK equivalent up like babblestorm or something?
You don’t even have to be that knowledgeable by web standards to provide an answer, just need to know how to use google, lol. Urghm, which defeats the point of it then.
Also, they can’t afford to hire knowledgeable people 24/7 so they’re stuck with average, joe bloggs running their search, yet another major caveat I am guessing Cha Cha is or will suffer from.