Tonight’s debate is an especially interesting one.  Rather than pair up two Alts in the same Vertical, it was suggested (I forget by whom) to compare and contrast two different approaches to general search – Tabbed metasearch represented by Boris from Zuula – a Top 100 Alt since Day 1 (and always the last!) and “Tagged” or the Tag Cloud feature from Search Engine of the Year winner Quintura represented by Yakov.


1. Do you build your own index or do you use another index? 
How important is that distinction?

 One of Zuula’s key advantages is that it does not force its users to trust either a new web index or a proprietary way of combining the results from numerous different search engines.  Instead, Zuula allows its users to continue relying on their favorite search engines, while also gaining quick access to results from other search engines, when they’re needed.  So, no Zuula does not have its own index.  Instead, it displays both the organic search results and, when available, the advertising of other search engines.  Results are displayed in a consistent manner across the different ngines, and there is always a clear distinction between “organic” results and advertising.

We at Quintura do build our own web index. As compared to a traditional web index, the Quintura web index is based on contextual relationships between words and phrases. We believe that any search engine has to have its own web index in order to create a substantial shareholder value and make it sustainable.

2.  Zuula uses “Tabbed” metasearch, and Quintura has a “Tagged” cloud – do you feel that these each have their merits, and if so, what are they?

 Both approaches definitely have their merits.  Indeed, they are complementary in many ways.  Let me explain.  For many people, Zuula (or a more traditional search engine) is what they’ll want to use for most of their searching.  For the majority of searches, the goal is to get the one or two links that you’re looking for, and to get them fast.  Zuula is great for those kinds of searches.

Quintura is complementary to Zuula and other services, then, in the sense that it is useful in those cases where the user isn’t quite sure how to find the information they’re looking for — where the user doesn’t quite know what keywords or search terms to use.  For those situations, Quintura may help the user identify concepts related to their initial search terms.  Using the concepts uncovered by Quintura, the user may eventually get to the information they’re searching for — using Quintura, or perhaps going back to Zuula and using it.

To be completely honest, though, I’d have to admit that Zuula and Quintura are competitive in addition to being complementary.  They are competitive in the sense that they both are useful for difficult searches.  Zuula makes difficult searches easier by facilitating access to results from many different search engines.  Quintura makes difficult searches easier by helping its users find related concepts with which to improve and narrow their searches.   Yet I wouldn’t overemphasize this competitive aspect of the two services.  It exists, but it shouldn’t overshadow the extent to which they can be used as complements to one another.

Today’s search engines require people to know how to query and then to mechanically sort through information to find what they want (or not). Quintura turns searching into finding. Quintura offers users a unique and simplified experience. With a single word, Quintura helps users refine their search, exposing all kinds of information in a single view. With a Quintura tag cloud users control their search process. Even if they don’t know what they are looking for – Quintura helps people explore new possibilities and find information.

3. For Boris – how is Zuula different from other similar metasearch engines? And for Yakov, how does Quintura differ from other tag clouds?

 Zuula is a very different metasearch engine.  True, like all metasearch engines, Zuula makes it possible to view results derived from multiple source search engines.  Most metasearch engines, however, combine search results from multiple search engines, often intermingling organic results and advertising. 

Zuula, in contrast, keeps the results from different engines separate from one another.  It also clearly separates organic results and advertising.  Zuula adopts this approach because its goal is to make it possible for its users to rely on their preferred search engines for most of their searching, while also having quick access to results from other search engines when they’re needed.

With a Quintura tag cloud, users can get to the information they need more dynamically and intuitively. They can get to deeper links quickly, not only getting to the information they seek – but to the hidden information they didn’t even know could be found. Quintura allows users to control the search process rather than the search process or technology controlling the user.

4. Will an “Alternative” search engine ever reach 5% of search market share?  If so, will it be you?

 I’m certain that an “Alternative” search engine will one day leap the 5% market share hurdle.  I’m not optimistic, however, that this will take place very soon.  I think the major search engines have developed formidable leadership in many different areas critical for search success.  This leadership makes it difficult for an “alt” to gain noticeable market share in the near future.

Will Zuula achieve a 5% share of the search market?  All of us on the Zuula team certainly hope so, and we’re working hard to make it happen.  But we’re also modest enough to recognize that it’s likely to be a long time until we even come remotely near that target.

It should reach a much larger market share. Our investors Mangrove Capital Partners once said “The next Google will come out of Eastern Europe” and we share that vision with them.

5. What is your relationship, if any, with other search engines?
How do feel about partnerships?

 We’ve been very fortunate at Zuula in regard to our relationships with other search engines.  I believe this is due to some very conscious decisions we made when we launched Zuula. The first decision was to make Zuula freely accessible to any user, and to always keep our users in mind as we develop Zuula further.

The second decision was to never, ever, try to make even a cent of revenue from Zuula as we continue to evolve the site’s initial features and functionality.

The third decision was to show deep respect for our source search engines by fully maintaining the integrity of their search results and their advertising.  Not surprisingly, after some initial apprehension in the community about our goals and policies, I think it became clear that we can be a valuable partner and an ideal showcase for the impressive variety the search industry has to offer. So we have been very open to partnerships, and this will undoubtedly continue to be the case going forward.

We currently make use of web indexes of other search engines such as Yahoo! and Yandex as well as using our own index on Quintura Kidsand Quintura for site search. For example, we use an index of Blinkx video search engine to find videos since Blinkx currently has one of the largest web indexes of videos. In fact, Quintura could be implemented as a visualization layer on top of any search index. That is why we are open to any mutually beneficial partnership. However, our goal is to build a standalone business and beat Google by providing a superior search experience, offering a new site search model for web publishers, and delivering much better search results to users.

Thank you, Boris and Yakov.  Readers, if you have a question for Zuula or Quintura, please leave a comment and we’ll ask them to check back as time allows.

Every Tuesday night on AltSearchEngines, we invite two vertical search engines to discuss the similarities and differences with their projects.  Tonight is one of the most interesting ones that we have ever had - the exotic (to me) world of Arabic / English search engines featuring two very respected search engines: Onkosh and Tayait.


1) For all of our readers who know English but not Arabic, please summarize the challenges that you have faced in building an Arabic / English search engine and how you solved them.

In order to build a search engine, you must first give your system the ability to understand the relationship between various different factors – specifically, the relationships between individual words and the overall structure of the language.

A computer’s ability to understand and process a language is based on a Natural Language Processing (NLP) – and while many languages have been comprehensively understood through NLP technology, Arabic is one of the few major languages left on earth in which major headway is still being made till today.

It is the nature and complexity within the actual language itself that has caused this delay in its development. There are two major hurdles that need to be surpassed when it comes to the application of NLP technology to Arabic:

Both of these realities about the Arabic language create a level of intricacy that as humans comfortable with the language, we have no problem understanding – but when it must be reduced to a rule-based system creates a level of complexity that is very difficult to process.

In order to solve these problems we partnered with an international company that has dedicated part of its R & D to Arabic language processing for the last 15 years, and brought in several of our own NLP specialists to develop our own NLP module, tama (taya Arabic Morphological Analyzer). Using tama we can choose to search all the inflections, derivatives, and all possible synonyms of the word – this alongside the ability to search for a term in English and return all the Arabic results that are related to that term.

The main challenge lies in the fact that the Arabic language is much more complex than the Romanized-based languages.

The Arabic language has a complex script and rules. Add to that, there are invisible characters (called diacritics or ‘tash.keel’) which can alter the way the word is pronounced, and can have a completely different meaning and root—compared to English, a quite ‘straight forward’ language.

Thus, it would be hard to judge relevancy of Arabic search results. In Onkosh, these issues are handled in a smart way that can practically maintain accuracy, and most importantly maintain search time/performance to much less than a second for 92% of the queries, even with high load of concurrent queries.

It is worth mentioning the fact that the ‘giant’ SE’s are mostly treating Arabic blindly (i.e. doing exact match). This does not help the user seeking relevant Arabic information, rather just exact-match results.

Another main challenge is auto-identifying the Arabic-related portion of the web (index coverage). Onkosh tries as much as possible to include not only the Arabic-language pages, but also the ‘Arabic-related’ content in other languages (especially English and French). Building a smart and Arabic-oriented crawler was in itself very challenging.

2) We (in the U.S.) hear a lot about the U.S. and Chinese markets (Baidu, etc.) Where would you place the Arabic market for Search in a global context? How large is it (how many users)? Is it growing, at what rate, etc.?

Well the easiest way to look at the Arabic market and compare it to other language specific markets around the world is by looking at the total number of Internet users that are currently online and use their historical growth rates to extrapolate how this number will continue to grow.

Historically the Chinese market has been considered one of the largest developing markets in the world – and within the last seven years (from the years 2000 – 2007) they have seen an approximate 720% increase in their total number of internet users – going up from 22.5 to 162 million users.  Japan – considered another developing market considered to have massive potential, has had an increase of 185% – going up from 47 to 87.5 million users online.

The interesting thing about the Arabic market – is that it cannot be divided into a single specific country – as it is a language spoken in varying degrees throughout an entire region of countries (including not only the Middle East – but North Africa as well). The North African region (specifically Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and Libya) has seen a growth rate of almost 2500% in the last seven years in the total number of internet users.

The Middle East (including Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the UAE) has seen another 700% increase. This comes out to an estimated 22 million users online today. Though this total number may not compare to that of China or Japan currently – this is a market with an incredible potential and we only expect the adoption and penetration rates of Internet technology to increase in the future.

[Same question]  A lake, small by nature, can be nothing within a huge ocean. This is the case for the Arabic web as part of the global Internet.

We can safely claim a few estimations based on a pseudo-scientific observation and analysis:

First: the Arabic web is currently somewhere in the size of 200-300 million pages only.

Second: the growth rate is very aggressive.

Third: a big portion of the old Arabic web is not SEO-friendly – this getting fixed as sites are added or revamped, since now SEM started to get the webmasters attention in the Middle East and North Africa arena (MENA), where our target audience primarily relies, and of course we target all the Arabs and Arab-speaking users around the globe mostly resident in the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada.

Referring to the Internet statistics website, at the time of writing this (Nov. 18, 2007), we have these growth rates in Internet penetration. The below analysis cohesively indicates parallel growth in the ‘related’ content over the years 2000-2007 (Please compare to total growth of the world which is 244.7%):

2647% growth in North Africa (stats calculated based on the top six Arab African countries: Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, and Libya – Excel sheet attached).

Internet Usage Statistics for Africa

920% growth in Middle East: although the population is about 2.9%, the Internet penetration is growing much faster than the rest of the world. The Middle East is not limited to the Arab countries, but the general indicator does the job.

3) You both have the keyboard icon near your search box, could you explain how it is used, and also, for someone like me, can you explain the term “Bel-3araby ” to a non-Arabic user!

Here in Egypt, as in the rest of the Arabic speaking world, when you buy a keyboard, laptop, cell phone, etc – alongside the normal QWERTY keyboard we also have the Arabic alphabet printed (this is the extent to which the Arabic language is engrained in the community – the majority of SMS’s are even sent in Arabic on specially manufactured phones with Arabic letters printed on their keypads).

That being so, Tayait is not designed to be used only by users living within the Arabic world. We realize that there are a huge number of Arabic speakers throughout the globe – who would love to have access to Internet content in their native language – yet who may not have an Arabic keyboard. We, therefore, offer our online Arabic keyboard as a means through which users can quickly and effectively input search terms of their choice – whether they have an Arabic keyboard or not.

We realize though that sometimes using an online keyboard can be cumbersome for entering search terms – especially for power searchers who initiate many different queries at the same time to try and get the best result – this is why we have offered our Cross Language Functionality – offering our users the ability to use a normal English QWERTY keyboard and input the desired search term in plain English, while tama will take care of returning all the relevant Arabic search results to this English query.

[Same question] The keyboard usage is quiet simple. Once you click the icon, your Arabic queries become a few clicks away, even if your computer does not support Arabic at all. This even helps users who have difficulty or slowness in Arabic typing. Additionally, it is ideal for the Arabs living in the U.S. and other places where it is very rare to find Arabic keyboards. 

As for the feature “Bel-3araby”, this is first an Arabic word pronounced
as ‘bel-a’araby’ and means ‘in Arabic’. The feature is patent-pending,
and the term “Bel-3araby” itself is copyrighted to Onkosh. On that note,
I am very proud to say that I am a co-inventor, among five, of the
patent.

This feature enables you to use your Latin-based keyboard to write
Arabic words the way they are phonetically uttered using the Roman
characters and numerals that became very popular in people’s chats or
mobile messaging. In short, Bel-3araby is a transliteration service
from Romanized alpha-numerical input to Arabic output. It is an
intelligent service employing lots of careful heuristics and AI
techniques tailored from ground up to understand the Arabic user needs
(You may refer to this previous post.)

Many attempts are now in action to imitate “Bel-3araby”, after its
importance was recognized at Onkosh.

4) Are there positive things that you see in the other search engine in this debate? Are you competing for exactly the same users, or are there some differences in either a) Your objectives or b) Your approaches, that you could share -as far as you understand your debate partner?

The fact that there are other Arabic search engines out there in and of itself is a positive thing. We believe that Arabic speakers have been held back long enough from being able to effortlessly search the Internet without having to learn a second language – and in that pursuit its incredibly beneficial for all parties to have a variety of companies and people trying out different things in order to provide the best quality search results for Arabic Internet users all around the world. Though the specifics of Onkosh’s objectives are privy only to them, I think we both would agree that the Arabic Internet has incredible potential – if given the infrastructure to thrive. Offering search in Arabic is one of the most critical parts of that infrastructure – but there is much more to come.

We differentiate ourselves and our search results by not only using excellent search technology- but at the same time we have a team of individuals who make the effort of identifying the best quality Arabic websites for the most common search terms to be crawled – this in the hope to provide our users with the highest quality content on the Arabic Internet today. This means that we actively ensure that the most active blogs, news, Wikipedia, and a whole host of Arabic websites are always crawled and indexed – and we continue to add and develop our database daily using the best content we can find.

Yes definitely. They are doing an excellent job in integrating with Exalead, which I find a very good engine indeed. Tayait also have the Arabic synonym search, which is not yet public in our release. Their product Tama has been there for long indicating good performance and reliability.  Our audience overlaps for sure. I am not sure about their preferred segment. Since the Internet has no boundaries, Onkosh defines its audience as all those who use, understand, and/or are interested in the Arabic-related content around the globe.

5) I find both of your projects very impressive; are you the two dominant Arabic / English search engines, or are there others, perhaps less well known ones, that we should also know about that are also good?

Tayait and Onkosh have been in the news quite recently because we have both come out at around the same time in full force. But we haven’t come from a completely nonexistent industry – there are other companies that have been offering Arabic search for a while now, these firms include, but are not limited to:

Araby.com, Arabo.com, Ayna.com, Ajeeb.com, and 4arabs.com

Once again – we think it’s great that there are other like-minded individuals working to provide better services to the online Arabic speaking community.  

Where do you hope to be two years from now?

In the next two years we obviously plan on devoting considerable efforts towards constantly improving our results – as search is our no 1 priority. But it doesn’t stop there – we want to provide Arabic Internet users the same range and quality of services available on the English Internet and in the rest of the world. We know it’s a considerable goal – but it’s something we believe in and are willing to work towards.

There are attempts for building an Arabic search engine Two could succeed to build a good audience: araby.com and ayna.com. We are aware of some other projects that were announced but not yet released like Sawafi, whose latest news said it will be renamed and launched ‘soon.’ 

Expectation for 2010: Two years from now seems a long time span in the fast-moving SE industry and science. What I can safely promise your respectable readers, is that Onkosh will be aggressively enhancing its services over the coming few months. We aim to be the number one local search engine, and to be the most reliable engine for the Arabic-interested user in general. We are very optimistic, and we hope we can help build better Arabic web.

Onkosh has a mission to help the Arabic-speaking user to start sharing and using the Arabic language in search. We are comprehensive in our services, not only depending on the basic form of web search. Onkosh offers other distinguished search flavors including, but not limited to: news, blogs, forums, and files. Not to forget, Onkosh also has a family filter for safe search, in addition to Onkosh.mobi that brings the Arabic web to your handheld device. At Onkosh, we are cordially happy to see others recognize Onkosh as a ‘role model’ in the Arabic search. We believe we did a good job, and we have received a lot of positive feedback that keeps us motivated to even challenge ourselves and work around the clock on more quality features, and we will continue to raise the bar!

AltSearchEngines:  We owe a great debt of thanks to Hany at Onkosh and Noha at Tayait for all of the time and effort that they donated for this debate. If you found it useful, I hope you will print it or email it for anyone else that you think might benefit from this detailed discussion of Arabic search engines. [but please link back to this post]

Of course, I also encourage you to try both of them, Onkosh and Tayait, today, to see their great features for yourselves. If you have a question or comment for Onkosh or Tayait, please leave a comment and we will ask them to check back and respond as they have time.

Tuesdays on AltSearchEngines we host our Great Debates where two or more search engines discuss issues that they have in common.  This week we are still lining some up, so I thought that I would provide you with links to some of our past debates in case you missed them.  Just click on the first word for the whole debate.


Continuous Search:   and  and

Search Results: Answers.com and  SenseBot.

MetaSearch:  Intelways, GoshMe, and Srchr.


Visualization: KoolTorch and searchCrystal

MP3 Search: MP3Realm and SkreemR.

Media Search: PodNova and Blinkx and EveryZing




Game Search: Wazap! and GameSkoot  

Social Search: Searchles and Wikia

Video Search: Dabble, and ClipBlast!

Health Search: GoPubMed and SearchMedica


People Search: Wink and yoName

Job Search: Recruit.net and SimplyHired.

Peer-to-Peer Search: ATLAS and FAROO 

Ticket Search: tickex and NinjaTickets

Would you like to schedule a debate?
Just email me at: Charles@ReadWriteWeb.com

Tuesdays on AltSearchEngines are reserved for those search engines willing to step out and engage in a little friendly debate with another “Alt” in their line of work.  Tonight we have an interesting new Vertical, Ticket Search engines, specifically Tickex (Dan Brinderson) and NinjaTickets (Cliff Mark).



1.  Could you summarize the difference between your search engine and, say, a Ticketmaster?

Ticketmaster is one of many Primary ticket outlets.  They sell allocations of tickets directly from the event promoters to the public. So this means that once Ticketmaster has sold out it doesn’t necessarily mean that the event has sold out.  Other Primary sources may have tickets available still as well as the secondary market. Ticketmaster also deals with the printing and delivery of the tickets.

What TickEx does is take an objective view of the entire ticket market.  We provide ticket data from primary and secondary ticket providers so the consumer sees a completely transparent marketplace. We give the consumer a comparison shopping/vertical search engine for live event tickets allowing them to see prices and availability from the numerous vendors all in one simple and fun to use search.

We simply show the consumer who has what and for how much in the world of tickets.

Ticketmaster has direct contracts with event promoters and venues to sell box office tickets online. Ticketmaster, however, can quickly sell out of tickets, and does not provide a complete listing of primary tickets for all events. That’s where Ninja Tickets comes in. Ninja Tickets indexes and compares tickets from multiple secondary sources (i.e. resales) that rarely sell out of tickets as well as from multiple primary sources. Our aim is to categorize nearly every ticketed event as well as provide a source to compare and find the best prices on popular events.

2.  How do you keep your ticket results up to date considering the short “shelf” life of tickets?”

We up date our ticket records multiple times a day to ensure the customer receives the most up to date information on pricing and availability.

A huge problem with comparing and indexing event tickets is their short shelf life. A hot ticket or a high value ticket will be bought within minutes of being posted. For comparison shopping, Ninja Ticket’s Live Results™ is essential to enabling shoppers to find the best deals. At Ninja Tickets we have industry exclusive technology which allows us to deliver Live Results™ at the time of search across all stores that we index.

3. Considering the amount of ticket results, how does your site sort tickets?

Currently the number of tickets in our index is astounding, this is partly because our high level of coverage in all markets in the US but also because we cover the UK and are expanding throughout Europe as well.

To get through the amazing selection of tickets in our database we have introduced an industry leading set of sorting tools to help you find the best ticket for you.

All of our columns in the result sets are sortable.  We have a price filter that can narrow your results from both ends.  There’s a date filter, a city filter and a venue filter that allow you to see multiple cities on multiple dates and compare prices in the different cities.

Usability is extremely important to Ninja Tickets. For popular events, 5,000 tickets may be indexed making presentation and sorting of these tickets essential to a user’s ability to effectively digest such a vast amount of information. Ninja Tickets offers sorting by quantity, price, section, and value.

Our “Price Rating” feature sorts tickets by the highest value; it’s an extremely powerful and easy tool to use. This tool is extremely valuable because comparison shopping for tickets isn’t the same as comparing handbags or cars as there are so many variables in terms of ticket value, most notably where the ticketed seat is within the venue.

4.  Do you actually sell tickets to events?  If not, what is your business model?

The beauty of our business is that we never actually touch the tickets or deal with any fulfillment.  We are what we like to call a ’super affiliate’.  It is our business to provide a great service to the consumer by making searching for tickets quick, painless and relieving because they can go away feeling like they got the best deal on a ticket available.

NinjaTickets.com is neither a direct ticket seller nor a reseller. Ninja Tickets searches for tickets from Internet ticketing stores and displays this information in a useful array. Ninja Tickets is intended to be a “one-stop” resource for locating the best value in tickets. Our main objective is to provide an unbiased, information-rich site that will attract repeat users.

5.  Are there ways in which a Ticket Search engine can have a mutually beneficial relationship with another, more general, Alternative Search Engine?

I think there are always ways that alternative search engines can benefit each other.  There are many instances that I can see TickEx partnering with other search engines out there and them being beneficial to both parties involved.

Yes, we can have a mutually beneficial relationship, that’s already in the works.

Editor’s note: Will you share it with us when you can?

6.    Where would you like to be in one year – at the very end of 2008?

By the end of 2008, I see TickEx rapidly growing as the place to go to find tickets in the eye of the consumer.  I see our service becoming the benchmark for vertical search plays in terms of quality of results, impartiality and cutting edge design. 

By December 2008, NinjaTickets will index many more sources and expand its event data. The goal of this development is to provide even better functionality and usability for searchers who want to go to one source to find all their event tickets at the best price.

I want to thank Dan and Cliff for their amiability!  If you have a question for them, please leave a comment and I’ll ask them to take a look.

Every Tuesday night on AltSearchEngines we host a debate between two search engines in one particular area of search.  Tonight we have part two of the debate that began last week on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) search.  Here is the link to part one.



6) Participation: How do your users participate (By way of contribution and benefits)?

FAROO: Our users provide infrastructure, and ranking, and we provide technology, so in fact we are building our search engine together.  Therefore we decided that our users should also participate in the revenues.  Not some minor percentage, we are sharing revenues of up to fifty percent with our users.  They may donate their share for charity organizations, joining their forces not only for search, but also for helping other people.

Of course users also benefit from the collectively generated ranking and privacy protection. Currently we are about to define an API for FAROO’s distributed database.  That would allow everybody to use the distributed index, the collected information and ranking, both commercially and non-commercially, in mash-ups, with their own interfaces…

Probably there will be some contribution/usage-ratio, to keep the p2p-principle working.

ATLAS: Atlas is primarily for search implementers and services, not really end users. The model supports both free, attribution-based, and paid relationships, every entity must choose how they want to provide value into the network and what kind of reward they need for doing so. 

 7) Privacy: How do you protect the privacy of your users?

FAROO: FAROO does not collect any search log files. All search queries and the distributed index are encrypted.  Neither the other peers nor any intermediate party may observe searches or visited pages.

Due to the fully distributed architecture, FAROO is in fact working as a p2p anonymizer for searching, ranking and crawling.  No personal information is leaving the computer at any time. Even personalization is done client side.

We are giving back search privacy and censor resistance to the user, something what is more and more fading away with current search engines. 

ATLAS: There is no session data / cookies, IP addresses, or any user information whatsoever supported by Atlas.

Spam: How do you deal with search engine spam or SEO manipulation?

FAROO: With our attention-based ranking, SEOs efforts are not deciding the rank anymore, but the community of users itself.  Results which are of no interest to the users automatically lose rank and disappear from search results. With several statistical measures FAROO prevents bogus peer manipulation. 

ATLAS: Through competition, if any entity is injecting spam or being manipulated, competing entities have an opportunity to provide a higher quality.

9) When do you plan on having both a private beta, and a public one?

FAROO: During our presentation at TechCrunch40 September 17th we started our private beta. This is mainly intended to test and improve our distributed architecture.Using a dedicated crawler we are now increasing the number of indexed documents to prevent a “chicken or egg problem”, preparing our public launch later this year. 

ATLAS: Near the end of this year, being open source, they are one and the same .

10) Partners: What, if any, is your relationship with the dozens of “alternative” search engines? Any partnerships past, present or in the future?

FAROO: We are just about to start our search engine, so there are no partnerships with “alternative” search engines yet.  Of course we are always looking at what others do, and some recent achievements of “alternative” search engines in result clustering, natural language search or image recognition are amazing.

On the other hand, with opening our distributed index through an API there will be a lot more options for partnering in one or the other way.  But already today we have a lot of strong partnerships, and a lot more are to come – with each of our users

ATLAS: It’s all open source so partnerships don’t apply, anyone can get involved to help if they want to be part of it.

That concludes our two-part debate on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Search.

I want to heartily thank our participants, Wolf Garbe of FAROO and Jeremie Miller of Wikia.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them here.