New search engine hopes to provide alternative to Google

New search engine hopes to provide alternative to Google

By Michael Liedtke, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - Apostolos Gerasoulis has a message for everyone who relies on Google.com as an online guide: It's time to move on to something better.

After spending the past six months perfecting the technology, Gerasoulis and his development team will soon roll out a souped-up search engine called Teoma that will take dead aim at Google, widely regarded as the best way to find something on the Web.

"We are the next generation in search," said Gerasoulis, a Rutgers University mathematics professor who has had Google in his sights since founding Teoma in 1999. "Google has reached its maturity. We think people will prefer using a new technology that addresses their needs with greater authority."

Mountain View-based Google views Teoma as "an interesting approach" to searching, but remains confident its site will continue to provide the quickest, most useful responses on the Web, said Craig Silverstein, Google's director of technology.

"We think the jury is still out on how effective (Teoma) is," Silverstein said. "The user interaction required to get where you want to go can be pretty time consuming."

Analysts say the increased competition should improve the quality of online searches, the second-most popular application of the Web. Only e-mail is used more frequently than online search engines.

"I doubt Teoma will become a Google killer," predicted Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. "But it could become an interesting second choice and that should keep Google on its toes."

Teoma isn't the first to try to outdo Google. Online search pioneer AltaVista tried to recapture some of the following that it lost after Google's emergence by launching a copycat site called Raging.com in May 2000. Raging.com never made significant inroads and AltaVista ended the experiment last year.

"Google hasn't had anyone really try to challenge it for a while so it's going to be interesting to see how Teoma stacks up," said industry analyst Rob Lancaster of the Yankee Group.

Before it can threaten Google, Teoma still must prove it's the best among other lesser-known but technologically promising search engines, Sullivan said. This second tier of innovative search engines include Alltheweb.com and Wisenut.com, a Santa Clara-based startup recently purchased by LookSmart for $9.25 million.

Teoma - a Gaelic term for "expert" - lacked the financial resources to mount a serious challenge to Google until Gerasoulis and the other co-owners agreed to sell their Piscataway, N.J.-based company to Emeryville-based Ask Jeeves for $4.4 million last year.

Since the sale, Teoma has continued to provide search results on its site, but Ask Jeeves kept the most powerful tools under wraps during an extended testing phase. The retooled Teoma site is scheduled to debut at 5 p.m. today.

It won't be easy to topple Google, founded in 1998 by Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

In a measure of its popularity, Google processes more than 150 million search queries a day through its own increasingly popular site and other highly trafficked online destinations, such as Yahoo, that license Google's technology. What's more, Google has 3 billion Web documents in its index, compared with 200 million pages for Teoma.

Google users who visit the Teoma page will notice the similarities between the sites. Like Google, Teoma offers a mostly blank page broken up by a few bright colors.

Both sites depend on complicated algorithms to analyze search requests, but Teoma says its formula is more effective because it breaks the Web into clusters of online communities. This approach enables Teoma to categorize its results better than Google and offer more helpful choices to refine a request.

Besides providing a basic list of primary results, Teoma presents links to subcategories that may be related to a topic, as well as a section devoted to "expert" sources.

"When you are looking for something on the Web, we will help you find it, learn about it and investigate it," Gerasoulis said.

Teoma's multilayered approach might overwhelm some Web surfers accustomed to Google's more straightforward approach.

"One of the beautiful things about Google is that it really is 'Search for Dummies,' " Lancaster said. "Teoma is going to have to educate people how to get the most from its site."

Unlike Google's early days, Teoma will have ample marketing muscle to help spread the word about its site.

Even as its natural language search engine lost ground to Google and other rivals, Ask Jeeves continued to build one of the Web's best known brands. Ask Jeeves also has been a publicly traded company for nearly three years, another factor that should make it easier to draw attention to Teoma, Lancaster said.

Privately held Google became hugely popular without any major marketing campaigns.

Teoma already has paid dividends on Ask Jeeve's main site, which began incorporating the improved search technology in mid-December. Since it began to draw on Teoma's technology, Ask Jeeves says it has registered a 25 percent increase in the number of clicks on its search results while the rate of people leaving Ask.com in apparent frustration has declined by 15 percent.

The technology behind Google's great results

As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University.

PigeonRank System

Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

Why Google's patented PigeonRank™ works so well

PigeonRank's success relies primarily on the superior trainability of the domestic pigeon (Columba livia) and its unique capacity to recognize objects regardless of spatial orientation. The common gray pigeon can easily distinguish among items displaying only the minutest differences, an ability that enables it to select relevant web sites from among thousands of similar pages.

By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.

diagram When a search query is submitted to Google, it is routed to a data coop where monitors flash result pages at blazing speeds. When a relevant result is observed by one of the pigeons in the cluster, it strikes a rubber-coated steel bar with its beak, which assigns the page a PigeonRank value of one. For each peck, the PigeonRank increases. Those pages receiving the most pecks, are returned at the top of the user's results page with the other results displayed in pecking order.

Integrity

Google's pigeon-driven methods make tampering with our results extremely difficult. While some unscrupulous websites have tried to boost their ranking by including images on their pages of bread crumbs, bird seed and parrots posing seductively in resplendent plumage, Google's PigeonRank technology cannot be deceived by these techniques. A Google search is an easy, honest and objective way to find high-quality websites with information relevant to your search.

Data

PigeonRank Frequently Asked Questions

How was PigeonRank developed?

The ease of training pigeons was documented early in the annals of science and fully explored by noted psychologist B.F. Skinner, who demonstrated that with only minor incentives, pigeons could be trained to execute complex tasks such as playing ping pong, piloting bombs or revising the Abatements, Credits and Refunds section of the national tax code.

Brin and Page were the first to recognize that this adaptability could be harnessed through massively parallel pecking to solve complex problems, such as ordering large datasets or ordering pizza for large groups of engineers. Page and Brin experimented with numerous avian motivators before settling on a combination of linseed and flax (lin/ax) that not only offered superior performance, but could be gathered at no cost from nearby open space preserves. This open space lin/ax powers Google's operations to this day, and a visit to the data coop reveals pigeons happily pecking away at lin/ax kernels and seeds.

What are the challenges of operating so many pigeon clusters (PCs)?

Pigeons naturally operate in dense populations, as anyone holding a pack of peanuts in an urban plaza is aware. This compactability enables Google to pack enormous numbers of processors into small spaces, with rack after rack stacked up in our data coops. While this is optimal from the standpoint of space conservation and pigeon contentment, it does create issues during molting season, when large fans must be brought in to blow feathers out of the data coop. Removal of other pigeon byproducts was a greater challenge, until Page and Brin developed groundbreaking technology for converting poop to pixels, the tiny dots that make up a monitor's display. The clean white background of Google's home page is powered by this renewable process.

Aren't pigeons really stupid? How do they do this?

While no pigeon has actually been confirmed for a seat on the Supreme Court, pigeons are surprisingly adept at making instant judgments when confronted with difficult choices. This makes them suitable for any job requiring accurate and authoritative decision-making under pressure. Among the positions in which pigeons have served capably are replacement air traffic controllers, butterfly ballot counters and pro football referees during the "no-instant replay" years.

Where does Google get its pigeons? Some special breeding lab?

Google uses only low-cost, off-the-street pigeons for its clusters. Gathered from city parks and plazas by Google's pack of more than 50 Phds (Pigeon-harvesting dogs), the pigeons are given a quick orientation on web site relevance and assigned to an appropriate data coop.

Isn't it cruel to keep pigeons penned up in tiny data coops?

Google exceeds all international standards for the ethical treatment of its pigeon personnel. Not only are they given free range of the coop and its window ledges, special break rooms have been set up for their convenience. These rooms are stocked with an assortment of delectable seeds and grains and feature the finest in European statuary for roosting.

What's the future of pigeon computing?

Google continues to explore new applications for PigeonRank and affiliated technologies. One of the most promising projects in development involves harnessing millions of pigeons worldwide to work on complex scientific challenges. For the latest developments on Google's distributed cooing initiative, please consider signing up for our Google Friends newsletter.

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