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player ready...When you use a search service on the Web, you’ll comb through only a fraction of the data that is stored on computers connected to the Internet. It’s like panning for gold in just one branch of the stream.
But two new technologies could dramatically extend the reach of search sites like Yahoo! and Excite. The new technologies grew out of programs that let users search and retrieve files out of each others’ computers–tools that the record labels contend promote piracy.
One, by start-up Pointera of Palo Alto, Calif., could pose an even bigger piracy problem than Napster, a San Mateo, Calif.-based music-sharing service that the record labels are fighting in court. But Chief Executive Manish Vij says the software has other, legitimate uses, such as enabling co-workers to fetch data from each others’ computers.
The other new technology, called InfraSearch, was designed to let Web surfers tap into more resources on the Internet–product catalogs, for example, or stock indexes or even calculators. In effect, it puts specialized search engines onto computers that do not ordinarily respond to a search request.
The new technologies have the potential to bring a vast amount of new information to Internet users. But the risk is that the expanded searches will vacuum in more results that the user was not looking for.
Another important caveat is that both technologies are useful only if a large number of users adopt them–if there aren’t many computers hooked into the networks they create, the searches will not bear much fruit.
Still, Abbot Chambers, senior director of search and directory products for Redwood City, Calif.-based ExciteAtHome, said his company is intrigued by the promise of technologies like InfraSearch. Such tools could “help us peer into dark crevices that have previously been invisible to us,” Chambers said.
Vij, the 27-year-old head of Pointera, did not get into the digital search-and-retrieval business because of any particular love for music or file-swapping. Instead, he was spurred into the business indirectly by the entrepreneurial bug he caught from his father, who founded data-networking company Alantec in 1990 and sold it six years later for $700 million.
Vij earned an engineering degree from University of California-Berkeley in 1994, then headed north to join the Microsoft teams working on Word and PowerPoint. After watching Netscape’s wildly successful initial public stock offering in 1995, however, Vij burned to get into the action in the Valley.
So he went back to Berkeley in 1997 and launched NetStudio Corp., whose simplified Web design software was built to complement Microsoft’s offerings. The idea was to build a company that Microsoft would buy out, but Microsoft did not take the bait.
Vij’s next move was Spinfrenzy.com, which offered Web-site design tools over the Internet to a new audience–young Web surfers eager to build cool personal sites. Prompted by the success of Napster, Spinfrenzy added free file-sharing software to its site last August. Now Vij is spinning Pointera off from Spinfrenzy, offering the latter’s file-sharing technology to other Web sites. Like Napster, the software works by linking users’ computers into a virtual network through the Internet, but there are a couple of significant new twists.
First, the company’s “sharing engine” runs inside a standard Web browser and can be built into a conventional Web search engine. That way, if users type “Aerosmith” into the search field, they will receive links not only to the band’s official site and other Aerosmith material on the Web, but also to Aerosmith songs and videos on home PCs running the Pointera software.
Initially, the only people equipped with that software will be the ones who have been swapping files on Spinfrenzy.com. As new users run searches and click on Pointera-enabled links, however, the software will download automatically to their computers, Vij said.
Noting the popularity of “portal” sites like Yahoo! and Excite, Vij said, “We think the first portal that turns this on is going to be an order of magnitude larger than Napster is today.” That would be quite a feat, given that Napster signed up more than 10 million users in its first nine months.
But then, there are a lot of computers out there waiting to be searched–480 million, Vij estimated. By way of comparison, today’s search services index the contents of only about 14 million computers on the Web.
Pointera’s default settings will suggest that users share their digital music and videos, but those settings can be changed to specify any type of file. To address copyright concerns, future versions of the software will let Pointera-enabled search engines limit the types of files that can be retrieved, Vij said.
A second innovation is that users will be able to set up private sharing groups of friends or co-workers, rather than opening their files to anyone on the Internet.
This approach would be a lot easier than the alternatives today for small businesses and community groups, who typically have to upload the files they want to share onto Web-based storage services, Vij said.
The software also will provide links to on-line retailers selling products that match a search request, and can target advertisements based on what each user looks for on-line.
Chambers said Pointera seemed to pose a huge quality issue, namely, “How do you know what’s going to be any good?” But he added that the concept might work for certain niche interests, such as digital music files.
InfraSearch is an adaptation of Gnutella, a file-sharing software created by the founders of San Francisco-based Nullsoft. While Gnutella links computers into a virtual network for file-swapping, InfraSearch adds intelligent agents that can be programmed to respond to search requests.
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Gene Kan, 23, a programmer from Mountain View, Calif., who is leading the InfraSearch team, said the agents can be the bridge between today’s search engines and any kind of information resource–even one that is rapidly changing.
For example, if you typed “Sprint” into an InfraSearch-enabled search service, you might get a link to Sprint’s corporate Web site, a Sprint stock quote from Intuit, a list of Sprint mobile phones from Radio Shack, and a coupon for a competing long-distance or wireless-phone service from AT&T.
The risk is that the expanded searches will vacuum in more results that the user was not looking for.