主题：google的挑战者：clusty -- 林小筑

http://clusty.com/

简单地说，这个搜索引擎的卖点在于自动的把搜索结果进行分类组织(clustering)。比如说搜索"java"，他就把搜索结果自动分成一下类别。

⇨Technology (32)

⇨Open Source (16)

⇨FAQ, Java programming (16)

⇨JavaScript (22)

⇨Tutorials (14)

⇨Java Applets (17)

⇨Games (13)

⇨Download Java (6)

⇨Reviews (9)

⇨Class (8)

其中有些类还能展开，划分成跟小的类。比如把technology类展开，就成了下面这个样子。

Technology (32)

⇨Developer Forums (2)

⇨Mobile, Information Device Profile (3)

⇨Marketplace For Java Technology (2)

⇨Servlets, XML (3)

⇨Microsoft (2)

⇨Apple, Mac (2)

⇨Certification Java (2)

⇨Java Programming (3)

⇨Other Topics (13)

利用了人工智能技术做的，而不是人类进行的手工分类，所以结果当然不能尽善尽美。但这体现了一种崭新的思想：当网上信息量多到了泛滥的程度时该怎么办? 应该利用计算机来帮人类过滤和组织这些信息。

说起来，其实google也有了类似的东西，就是其新闻聚合器。http://news.google.com.hk/news?ned=cn&hl=zh-CN

http://clusty.com/

New Company Starts Up a Challenge to Google

September 30, 2004

By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 29 - Google executives have long

conceded that one of their great fears is to be overtaken

by a more advanced Internet search technology. Vivisimo, a

company founded by three former Carnegie Mellon University

computer scientists, is hoping to prove that Google's

worries are well founded.

Four-year-old Vivisimo plans to start Clusty, a free,

consumer search service based on results from Yahoo's

Overture engine, Thursday.

Vivisimo already offers a search service for corporate

customers, which clusters results into categories to make

them easier to sort through. Search "swift boat," for

example, and Vivisimo returns 149 results - listing them

one by one, and also as a table of categories, like "Swift

Boat Veterans," "John Kerry" and "Patrol Craft Fast" on the

left-hand side of the Web page.

The new Clusty service for consumers, which will be free

and supported by advertising revenue, uses a similar

organizational structure. But it also presents a series of

tabs enabling the user to see results from sources besides

the general Web, including shopping information, yellow

pages, news, blogs, and images.

Vivisimo, which is privately held and is profitable,

according to its executives, has been selling its

clustering technology to corporations for research by their

employees. Now Vivisimo is making an effort to compete more

broadly by attracting consumers to its Web site,

clusty.com.

The service is meant to address the confusion that can be

created when search engines return huge lists. Clustering

is also intended to help users find related material they

may overlook when they employ services that utilize page

ranking methods. Such methods employ a variety of software

algorithms to rank Web pages by their perceived relevance

to a query.

Many search experts say that clustering offers a better way

of looking at information than Google's page ranking

system.

"As databases get larger, trying to pull the proverbial

needle out of the haystack gets tougher and tougher," said

Gary Price, a librarian who is also the news editor at

SearchEngineWatch, a Web site that covers the industry.

"Here, you're getting a bit of extra help."

Vivisimo's co-founder and chief executive, Raul

Valdes-Perez, was a protégé of Herbert A. Simon, a Nobel

laureate who was a pioneer in artificial intelligence

research. Before co-founding Vivisimo, Mr. Valdes-Perez was

a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. He

professes that the way to deal with information overload is

with information "overlook" - techniques that strip away

extraneous information.

Clusty would generate money for Vivisimo by placing several

search-related advertisements from Overture on the

right-hand side of each page. Revenue from the ads would be

shared by Vivisimo and Overture.

Unlike many start-ups, which are launched with venture

capital financing, Vivisimo was created with help from a $1

million grant from the National Science Foundation Small

Business Innovation Research program, which is intended to

stimulate innovation by new companies.

Vivisimo is not the first to introduce clustering for Web

surfers. Northern Light, a search engine company founded in

1996, had offered a consumer service featuring what it

called "custom search folders." But that company is now

focused on corporate applications.

Google is also using clustering technology, but in a more

limited fashion: its news page provides links to topics

that appear on news sites.

Microsoft and Yahoo have been drawn into the search

business in part because of Google's profitability and

rapidly growing revenue - $962 million for the quarter that

ended in June, up from $389 million in the previous

quarter.

The introduction of Clusty comes two weeks after A9, a

subsidiary of Amazon.com, introduced a service focused on

organizing information retrieved during various Web

searches.

"Search will look more like the magazine business than the

soda market," said Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist at

University of Washington and an advisory board member of

Vivisimo. He predicts that users might select from a

variety of services, rather than from a few dominant

players.

"The competition has shifted from crawling the Web and

returning an answer quickly," Mr. Etzioni said, "to adding

value to the information that has been retrieved."

A Google spokesman declined to comment on the service.

Vivisimo's executives are betting that there is an audience

for providing a different view of Web search results.

"Google is excellent at crawling as much of the Web as they

can; we don't do that," said Mr. Valdes-Perez. Instead,

Vivisimo tackles the question, "How do you solve the

problem of information overload?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/30/technology/30search.html?ex=1097903707&ei=1&en=87e20490beecdd4b