MyLiveSearch, MyTwoCents
Having started my career at a search engine startup, I still have an affinity to search technologies, engines and algorithms. Needless to say, the buzz around MyLiveSearch (here, here and here) had me signup for their beta and wait with keen anticipation to take it out for a test drive. I was excited because this is a tough nut to crack as your competition is behemoth…talk about a Googolian Goliath. Their only shot at making a dent at this was to totally reinvent the wheel. On that note (and I apologize for the digression), I would sure wish that Yahoo! would get on the “reinvention” band wagon instead of coming up with bad ripoffs of Google products.
Back to MyLiveSearch vs. Google. So, from the press and their faq, it seemed like they were doing just that…Reinventing Internet Search…wow!
Well, they have been live for almost a week. And here’s my two five cents on MyLiveSearch.
1. Real-time search – Yes, the big difference is that MyLiveSearch conducts real-time “live” searches. IMHO, that is also a big no-no because all searches are slooooowww. Why? For all tekkies out there, the search is like a view in your database. It gets created at run-time. For all you non-tekkies out there, there’s a reason why they don’t have a ‘Search took .14 seconds’ tag on the results page.
2. Client-side processing - Not only is the search real-time, but it also uses your computer’s processor to conduct the search, i.e., searches are slower than any other engine out there.
3. No algorithmic bias – Although advertised as a feature, again, I’m not sure if this is essentially true or good. With the amount of ‘kaka’ (excuse my French, pun intended) on the internet today, it is essential to provide some reasoning to internet searches. MyLiveSearch entrusts users with that responsibility.
For example, you provide a starting point, say Google. And then you search for ‘Web 2.0 Los Angeles’. MyLiveSearch finds the top 10 results from Google and then it starts spidering the top 10 results for more matches on the web. In essence, it really isn’t “algorithm-free”.
But it does allow you to ‘Search From Here’ on any of your results. Works well for broad searches with broad sites as results but you’re likely to come up empty if you select random results that “you” think are relevant. Hence, the need for an algorithm.
4. Only 1 search at a time - What!! I’m an ADD suffering by-product of the technology age. I have 3 monitors on my desk while I’m flipping through 200 channels of (useless) programming on my TV. And you give me 1 search at a time!
5. Revenue-model: They’re still in beta, so there is no advertising on the searches yet. But it would be refreshing to see a retake on “Sponsored Results”.
All in all, full marks for trying with tons of room for improvement.
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