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Blinkx and You Won't Miss It
WebfishUK writes "The Guardian is running this story about Blinkx a a kind of "search companion" which aims to bring internet searches in closer contact to what you are working on. Its total search approach (including email attachments, blogs and local files) seems to have some parallels to Googles Gmail engine. Could this be the first real technology threat for Google?"
..is Google's GMail an engine?
Free advertising on The Guardian and Slashdot can't hurt.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
After reading this...
blinkx works by comparing relevant information to deliver results, but never uses the original documents. The only actual hard information blinkx collects is your e-mail address when you decide to download the blinkx client.
And then this...
This site recognizes the home server of visitors, but not their e-mail addresses. This site also uses "cookie" technology so that we can better understand how to improve the experience of visiting our website. Also, blinkx tracks the Internet address of the domains from which visitors are coming and uses this data for statistics and analysis on the levels of success of our web programs, but the name of the visitor remains anonymous.
They are pretty much saying that they *only* collect your email address and all of your web browsing data, but don't worry since they don't have your "name".
One important difference: Google stores your info on their servers, and parses them for ads on their servers. This does the searching and parsing on your machine, and just requests ads from the server (according to their privacy policy)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Maybe this is a threat to Google, but I don't think the competitors are far behind. Nat Friedmans Dashboard and Sideboard have been mentioned elsewhere, and it seems like Microsoft is planning a similar application themselves.
Apparently Google is planning local hard drive searches as well, in a pre-emptive move against improved search techologies that will be a part of Windows/Longhorn.
So I guess Blinx won't be left alone for long. However, when it comes to search, the more players the better. Google is well on its way to become the new Microsoft, and I don't think it's in anybodys best interest to get a search monopolist.
Who cares, as long as no data is sent to them?
I do care if they read stuff and collect it, but if they don't, what's the problem? Same goes for Gmail btw.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This can easily be wiped out by companies like Microsoft and Apple anyway. In Apple's case, all they would need to do is link Spotlight with Sherlock with some simple plugin.
The reason Google can compete is that it isn't an application that you have to download. Anything that is a downloadable application will be easily snuffed by major software companies like those that make instant messaging apps like Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, and Apple.
You gotta love the use of the term "optimized for", when waht they actually mean is "requires" :-)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"search information from your desktop"
...
This one feature is enough to know that Blinks is not going any where.
I don't know why people are still tied to the Desktop. One of the great success of Google is that its not tied to the desktop (yeah, I know they are working on desktop tools too).
People travel and move, change computers, change system, reformat...blah..blah. All that learning over your desktop is of no good use.
Beauty of google (web interface search) is i get the same great results no matter where I acces it from, which machin I access from
Desktop search sucks...but the concept of desktop itself sucks in the first place.