Blekko

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Blekko
Website logo
Internet search engine
languages English
operator Blekko Inc.
Registration not mandatory
On-line November 1, 2010 (currently listed on March 27, 2015)
https://web.archive.org/web/20130302003242/http://blekko.com/

Blekko (own spelling blekko ) was a search engine that started official operations on November 1, 2010 and was discontinued on March 27, 2015. Blekko was operated by the US company Blekko Inc.

history

The company was founded in 2007 by, among others, Rich Skrenta , the founder of the Open Directory Project . Skrenta had previously offered a free Telnet service under the name blekko , via which some command line tools such as the text-based browser Lynx could be used.

After IBM acquired the search engine technology from Blekko, the service was discontinued on March 27, 2015; IBM referred to an article in the IBM blog Building a Smarter Planet , in which it was announced that Blekko's web crawler technology would in future be used to enhance the capabilities of the Watson AI program for advanced web crawling, categorization and “intelligent filter technology” complete.

concept

Blekko differed from most search engines in that the users were heavily involved in creating the results. Users of the service should improve the database by categorizing, commenting and filtering the search results. The search results were filtered using so-called slash tags . Slash tags were attached to search queries to limit search results to web pages on a topic such as health, money, or cars.

In contrast to other search engines, Blekko had its algorithm, i. H. the sorting of the search results, disclosed.

Apps

In January 2013 Blekko presented an application for tablets called Izik that ran with the Apple iOS or Android operating system . Compared to the Blekko search engine itself, which primarily included the user in the search, Izik differentiated itself through the graphic preparation of the results. Instead of a classic (mainly text-based) list of websites, the software generated a kind of magazine for each request, the presentation of which was based on services such as Flipboard or Google Currents . The app supports gestures with multiple fingers.

criticism

One point of criticism was that the focus was on English language websites and filters. In addition, compared to Google , Yahoo or Bing, only three billion websites were indexed. Blekko justified this with the wish to clean up the web search and filter out the spam. In addition, the involvement of the users carried the risk of inappropriate linking of comments and categorizations and thus manipulation of the search results. For example, George W. Bush could be associated with the category of miserable failure - similar to the case with the Google bomb .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Amir Efrati: Start-Up Aims at Google. In: The Wall Street Journal . October 31, 2010, accessed January 8, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Michael Arrington: Shhh. Blekko Is Still In The Oven. Do not disturb. In: TechCrunch . The Washington Post , May 30, 2009; accessed January 8, 2013 .
  3. ^ Claire Cain Miller: A New Search Engine, Where Less Is More. In: The New York Times . October 31, 2010, accessed January 8, 2013 .
  4. ↑ Stealth Search Engine Blekko Gets Money From Marc Andreessen, SoftTech. In: TechCrunch. The Washington Post, May 14, 2008, accessed January 8, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Rich Skrenta: blekko ( English ) Archived from the original on August 15, 2000. Retrieved April 2, 2018.
  6. ↑ Data, Data, Everywhere Data. Now a Better Way to Understand It ( English ) In: Building a Smarter Planet . IBM. March 27, 2015. Archived from the original on March 27, 2015. Retrieved on April 2, 2018.
  7. ^ A b Frank Patalong: Google challenger Blekko: The search-with-machine. In: Spiegel Online . November 4, 2010, accessed January 8, 2013 .
  8. ↑ Jennifer Van Grove: Alternative search engine Blekko launches. In: Mashable. CNN , November 1, 2010, accessed January 8, 2013 .
  9. ↑ Klaus Junginger: Q&A: Blekko execs explain their search engine strategy. In: Computerworld . November 7, 2010, accessed April 1, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Manfred Kloiber , Marcus Schuler : With ideas against Google. In: DeutschlandRadio . August 7, 2010, accessed January 8, 2013 .
  11. ↑ Falk Hedemann: Google alternative: Izik wants to conquer tablets. (No longer available online.) In: t3n magazine . January 7, 2013, archived from the original on January 11, 2013 ; Retrieved January 8, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / t3n.de
  12. ↑ Thomas Jüngling: Users decide on search results. In: The world . November 7, 2010, accessed January 8, 2013 .
  13. ↑ Search engine separates the wheat from the chaff. In: derStandard . November 4, 2010, accessed January 8, 2013 .
  14. ↑ Search engine as spam filter. In: taz . November 3, 2010, accessed January 8, 2013 .