The NY Times is reporting (registration required) on the current state of affairs with new entrants to the search industry. It would seem that start-ups are once again able to get funding from venture capitalists if there's even a small chance that they'll be able to take a piece of the pie from Google.
- Powerset recently received $12.5 million in financing.
- Hakia, which like Powerset is trying to create a natural language search engine, got $16 million. The chief executive of Hakia exclaims that he expects his company to be one of the top 3 search engines.
- Another $16 million went to Snap, which has focused on presenting search results in a more compelling way and is experimenting with a new advertising model.
- ChaCha, which uses paid researchers that act as virtual reference librarians to provide answers to users' queries, got $6.1 million.
It's not all good news though. The NY Times cites Amazon's A9 search engine as an example of how likely failure is even if the service is well-regarded and backed by big bucks. Udi Manber of A9 fame has since moved to Google. Ouch!
Possibly the biggest advantage these new companies have is their belief that Google, like its predecessors, has taken its eye off the search ball and is now distracted with "as it introduces new products like word processors, spreadsheets and online payment systems and expands into online video, social networking and other businesses." And just like Google did many years ago, these new companies plan to take advantage of that distraction.
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