Do not ‘Google,’ just ‘Mooter
Coinciding with the Google’s decision to go public, a new search engine is
ready
for use. As the promoters Sergey Brin and Larry Page (two Stanford alumina)
put it,
the new search engine “Mooter”(www.mooter.com) calls itself “young and
inexperienced”
and seeks your mercy while being used. Termed as a “bright new upstart” it
has the
potential to undo a giant Google and is is definitely worth trying.
Google has been a prominent link in our computers ever since its debut in
the late
1990s. We have admired its simplicity, straightforwardness and efficiency in
doling
out information we want. Even Micro Soft Chairman Bill Gates had a word of
praise
for Google for its enviable efficiency. Although Google had a first mover’s
advantage,
the “Mooter” has the advantage of learning from the search engine features
that made
Google a success.
Born in Australia a few months ago, Mooter has already got the attention of
the world.
Soon after launching, it had to increase its server capacity twice to
accommodate
the booming international traffic.
There is, however, one fundamental difference between Mooter and Google in
coming
up with search results. Google throws up thousands of results but Mooter
groups search
results in various categories. For instance, when you look for “Management”,
it categorises
them into “Financial Management”, “Human Resources Management”,
“Marketing Management”
etc. You can click on a category that is appropriate to your needs. Mooter
also gives
one the option of seeing all the results on the page, the facility similar to
Google.
It is difficult to navigate thousands of results.
Further Mooter has incorporated “psychological modelling” to process the
information
sought by the users. This is quite unique. The search engine analyses the choice
of the user while searching and then records the results. The system has all the
results in the background but more relevant and more appropriate results are
only
displayed. The ‘mooter’ technology appears, therefore, to be superior to any
other
search engine and it preempts the needs of the user in order to provide the
relevant
result by keeping in the background unwanted information.
But like Google, Mooter will also have its pie of problems in the market. For
instance,
Yahoo which till recently used Google on its Web site now has its own
search engine.
Similarly, Microsoft is also planning something in the area of search engine.
All
these developments could deprive millions of hits for search engines. Google
has
introduced “Froogle” and “Gmail” that are shopping and e-mail portals
respectively.
Perhaps Mooter would also come out with some new products to cope with
the competition
in this business.
K V Rao

Just an email away......
Justin


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