Is search set to go nuclear by Hakia?
Friday, 10 October 2008
Hakia. Rhymes with a popular Finnish cellphone make and sound’s like a hacker’s nickname. It is presently ANOTHER search engine that might just become the OTHER search engine on its way to be THE search engine. What makes Hakia a potential David? The blog says it doesn’t rely on statistical ranking methods such as Page Rank, back links, and traffic to provide a quality search experience. Using, instead, “semantic” analysis and “meaning-based” searches to serve up useful information.
Hakia was initated in 2004 and is still in beta at the moment. No fanfare, simply an elite team lead by a nuclear scientist with specialization in artifical intelligence and fuzzy logic, an economist cum venture capitalist, and an authority on ontological semantics and computational linguistics working quitely to create what could be the search engine of the future.
Hakia has a tabbed interface, with a section reserved for “credible sites”. As we understand it, these sites are approved with some manual input from librarians. People will naturally home in on that tab when searching for information and it’s a tough section to get into (bad news for spammers, sploggers, and sites designed primarily for pay per click programs).
Hakia has also thrown down the gauntlet with a google challenge. It’s no secret what they are gunning for. WIll Hakia successfully take on Goliath?