What could be more fun than taking on Google in the search engine business??
I’m working with a company called IceRocket.com. (http://www.icerocket.com). IceRocket is a brand new search host that combines the best of spidered search, meta search, and what we hope are some unique and different features that make using the engine more efficient and addictive.
I’m not involved in the day to day, I’ve offered to help come up with some unique features that hopefully can allow them to separate from the pack. To me, this is a unique way to “design my own search engine”. The features that are and will be included, are the things I look for when I’m doing my searches.
Some of the things you can already find at http://www.icerocket.com are:
Web Search
– Thumbnail photos of results homepages – One of the thingsI hate about all search engines is that you click on a site hoping for a quality site, and you get an empty or shell website. The photos of the site give a quick look so you can see before you click. This can be turned on or off.
– Quick View – Without leaving the results of search page, you can see the top 40 pct of the destination page as a short cut to deciding if the site is what you are looking for.If its what you want, a quick click and the page opens up completely.
– Info – This is the traffic ranking from Alexa. It lets you know before you click whether anyone else goes to the site according to Alexa.
News Search
A new feature that handles the traditional function of searching news sites, sorted by date.
Picture Search
IceRocket has the exclusive search on non-traditional pictures sites. We search the old standbys, and the web, but also index non-traditional sites like webshots.com. This is a great place to find out if one of your friends took a picture of you and posted it for the world to see!
We will very soon be adding the ability to search Moblogs and other camera phone sites for pictures as well!
Find A Friend
This is a search engine of the “Look at my Picture” sites, like Game to Fame, Face the Jury, SinglesNet, Hot or Not, and more. We will be adding more sites and more features to this. It’s an addictive part of the site. You can get hooked just searching for pictures.
Email a Search
This is for PDA users in particular and is unique to Icerocket.com. It’s a pain in the butt to go to a search site, whether it’s Icerocket, Google, Yahoo, or wherever and input a search term. However, most PDAs are very email efficient. So we have created a “Search Relay”. All you have to do is send an email with the search terms as the subject to search@icerocket.comand it will return the results to you via email. You can do the same with pics@icerocket.com or news@icerocket.com.
So try it out and let me know what you think and if there are any other features you would like to see added. If we can do them, we will!!!
This is just the beginning, watch out Google, here we come :).
I like this excellent work than I have a new toy to explore =)
Comment by eggman -
The search engine is not total crap. Google and Yahoo might fit America, but what about other countries…They are getting a run for their money in China….and other Asian markets…Last time I was down in Latin America, not a whole lot of googling go on..so Irocket might find its niche…
Comment by runescape money -
I do not work for them but am very loyal to the way their engine works. It’s saved me so much time and effort that it’ll take a lot for me to stop trusting them. Icerocket isn’t going to take anything from google.
Comment by wow powerleveling -
http://www.icerocket.com have good results, but they are away by wath http://www.google.com shows in results.
Anyway they didn’t a bad job, but still need work there
Comment by autonews -
Searching for my own name produces a page full of results that all end up at the same link farm. Needs a lot of work. I don’t get any non-spam links until the fourth or fifth page and I gave up finding any result that actually go to my site. Needs a lot of work for the ego searcher.
Comment by Jerry Kindall -
happy belated birthday! (7/31)
Comment by Christine -
Hey Mark,
It’s a nice looking engine. I tried a sample search to test it out. My results came back, but with “error on page” (the crappy IE yellow trinagle icon). None of teh thumbnails displayed for the search results – just picture frames with a red “X” in the corner.
Are there certain seetings that have to adjusted in IE Internet Options? Are there firewall settings that can affect the thumbnail display results?
Hope this helps!
Comment by Justin R. -
Very cool search engine dude! You’ve got a hit (pardon the pun) there!!
Comment by whacky burger -
Looks WAY too much like Google’s front page….WAY too much.
Comment by Tony -
It’s pretty cool, but I really don’t see how you’re going to keep Google from releasing a new version that will copy and kill any competitive advantage you have. Using pictures to preview a website is nothing new. http://www.whois.sc already offers something similar for DNS lookup.
I would like to think that Yahoo is the one to target. They have so much content that you could begin to pick off one business line at a time (e.g. Yahoo groups, games, search engine, etc).
Check out http://www.guilduniverse.com. It’s a ‘create your own website wizard’ engine. It’s still in development, but we hope to eventually go after the ‘yahoo groups’ audience.
Currently we are testing the engine in the gaming genre.
Comment by Steve Ciske -
It looks pretty good and seems to give good results. I think, though, the biggest challenge is going to be marketing — specifically positioning vis a vis the competition. I don’t think the neat features you described are going to differentiate enough and make the site compelling enough to get users of other search engines to defect to it. For example, when I want to know how many feet are in a mile, I know to go to Google, where I can type in “feet in a mile” (or, e.g., “cups in gallon”) and it’ll give me the answer using its calculator function. Google is the only search engine I know of that can do that.
Here’s an idea (or at least an example of what I’m talking about): How about enabling searches in foreign languages? For example, if you’re an Ichiro fan, you can type in “Ichiro” and it will automatically search Japanese sites using the Japanese characters for “Ichiro.” The search results will be automatically translated into English so you can read it. There is much more written about Ichiro in Japanese than in English, so Ichiro fans (or anyone else who doesn’t want to limit him-/herself to English sites) would definitely use a site that could do this.
Mark, imagine if you could do online scouting for new foreign players by searching in that player’s country’s newspapers and sites, wouldn’t you be constantly using it? Or if you wanted to see what Dirk Nowitzki was up to in Germany during the off-season…. The translation wouldn’t have to be perfect, just good enough to figure out what they’re saying.
Comment by Eric Tsuchida -
mark, this is genius!
i tried it out and i love it. the pictures are a plus because with google, you can’t sift through the site results without opening each one. thanks!
Comment by Christine -
Mark, I tried emailing a search to icerocket from my office, but never got a reply. I’m guessing the message got eaten by our firm’s firewall/spam filter. When that happens, I don’t get a record of the email having been eaten, so I can’t say for sure.
But I typed in the address correctly, followed the directions correctly, and my email never bounced back, so I bet that the spam filter is to blame.
Any thoughts on how to cure that problem?
Thanks. Good luck.
Comment by Garrett -
The image-preview thing is about the best part of all of this. The worst part, not unpredictably, is the extremely phallic name and accompanying imagery.
And I agree with whoever said above that the Mavs should trade Walker, Howard and Harris to the Nets for Jason Kidd. Do the NBA and yourself a favor.
Comment by P.T. -
I love that you are doing things your way and changing them from the normal boring engine. I know you will succeed in this venture just like you do in everything you have ever done.
Comment by Claire -
I’d like to see more advanced boolean searches, similar to databases such as LexisNexis.
For example, consider this search: Cuban & Dallas (searches for pages with both “Cuban” and “Dallas”) in the text).
I’d like the option of doing this search: Cuban /s Dallas (searches for pages where “Cuban” appears in the same sentence as “Dallas”).
Comment by J.D. -
i looked up tom cruise images and pictures showed up that were not tom cruise at all…and also some nude photos showed up(not of tom cruise of course). I’ve never had that problem at google…
Comment by macy -
I did several searches for an exact phrase. The results were for pages that contained all the words, but not the exact phrase, a feature I use frequently on google to zero in a search. Also I would like the ability to show more than the top 20 results.
Comment by Leatherwing -
The searh concept for th PDA is great! It will also be very useful for cell phones. It would be helpful if you all marketed towards the mid to older business generation. Imagine a search engine geared toward business owners, with major adviertisments from Banks, Credit Companies, etc.
Or what if you had a site that marketed towards finding plagerized documents….You could index the enitre library of Congress, etc. It could be geared towards academia.
Comment by slw1234 -
Snapshots are cool as well as quick view, Some tools that are fresh, I will use this engine. keep adding to it mark.
Comment by Evan -
But this Firefox pluggin does it for Google anyways.
http://ackroyd.de/googlepreview/
Firefox is the browser that may save the internet from MS’s exploit of the week. Try at your own delight.
Comment by Scott Griffith -
you should have a special button to search blogs. blogrocket??
Comment by Jeff -
amazing!!
Comment by hank -
This is the same as Google with the MoreGoogle (www.moregoogle.com) add-on. Copycat?
Comment by Eduardo -
The tab order on the controls is not useful. Instead of just typing your search and hitting tab to get to the submit button, you have to tab through the advanced search, preferences, and exact phrase links/controls first. Minor detail, but the kinds of things someone will have to nail perfectly if they want to bring down google.
Comment by Rob Meyer -
The thumbnails are more useful than I expected, and the quick view is actually a really great feature–if you’re just looking for an address or phone number, it seems easier to just use quick view in the search entries. And although I disagree with many of the suggestions on here, I do think a blog-search feature would be really cool.
Comment by Jake -
at first I was spektical, but I tried it out and I must I admit I like it a good deal. Don’t know if I’m going to stop useing google, but I’ll give icerocket a shot. The thumbnail images is a awsome feature – keep it. I would change the name as someone else suggested. I also like the google like interface – short and sweet.
Comment by jon k -
You dont have to be google or yahoo to have a successful search engine. There are plenty of other out there that make money and have their own user base. I think its great that Mark is trying to do some different things that the other site wouldnt do. Great site, look forward to future things.
Comment by Gary -
I’m a huge Google fan, and it came as no surprise to see another Google clone. Microsoft bread their’s a couple weeks ago with search.msn.com. Then Amazon dipped into the search engine pool with A9.com, which is slightly different from Google, but so hard on the eyes. What were they thinking with that terrible URL?
I respect you Mark for taking the big boys at Google on, but I can’t really see the USP (unique selling proposition) in IceRocket.
First off, the name is nothing like Google or Yahoo, it’s very ineffective. Both Google and Yahoo have become verbs in our common language. It’s cool to have “googled the dallas mavericks” but it’s very awkward to have “icerocketed the dallas mavericks”. The logo reminds me of a junior hockey team and is very masculine in both typography and it’s colour palette.
The layout of the page, other than that childish rocket at the bottom of each, was born from Google, which I really don’t mind.
The search results clock a little slower than Google but still get the job done. I do not like the sponsored listings within the search results, those should be kept to the side of the page.
I really liked the snapshot and quickview features. Very handy if you’re bandwith can handle them.
The images results are not as precise as Google and the search options aren’t customizable like the image size, results per page, and the ability to disable adult content. I don’t like the grey gradient added to irregular shaped images within the results.
The products search is inaccurate and isn’t really needed. There are other search engines out there made just for searching for products, let them handle that task.
Find a friend is a great little feature and could possibly yield more revenue for you with partnerships with different dating sites such as Lavalife.
It would be great if you could implement location specific searching such as google.ca, which allows me to browse Canadian search results.
Maybe you could incorporate a blog searching tab that allows you to search for terms in daily blogs.
Overall, I think you and/or the creator’s of the site are in for a helluva workload trying to take on two giants, Google and Yahoo. It’s not a wise move in business to try and sell someone else’s product with your name on it. I need a fantastic and unique reason to use IceRocket (hopefully that name gets changed), instead of Google, and there is no reason to do so right now.
Google has crossed the chasm and reached the tipping point very quickly because they gave everyone a reason to use them and encourage their friends and coworkers to do the same. They knew how to start a massive word-of-mouth campaign and generate positive buzz. If you can do that I’ll start using your search engine.
Cheers.
Comment by jimmiejo -
Some people were asking about mamma.com. I think I saw a few weeks ago that Cuban had sold some/possibly gotten out entirely. I think it was all some ploy to see if he had enough clout to pump a stock with just the notice of his investment 😉
Comment by Nick Reed -
I really like the new features and if I can ever trust that it will give me the same results as google, I would switch.
I also want to ditto the above suggestion to open links in a new window or tab. I’m not sure about the coding since a lot of people still aren’t using tab enabled browsers, but that would be great to automatically open a new tab in Firefox, Safari or Opera.
Over all a nice search engine.
By the way, what happened to mama.com? I thought that wa your pet search engine.
Comment by geektron -
I love IceRocket. A lot more fun than any other engine.
Comment by JJ -
icerocket sucks. As someone pointed out, why is ebay always the first result? That’s very annoying.
Comment by Tim -
I do 90% of my initial searches (i.e. before refining the search terms to get closer to the correct results) from the search box in the Firefox toolbar. Unless I can select IceRocket as the default search engine there, I won’t be using the site much if at all. Email me news of the plug-in or post it in a new post here and I’ll use IceRocket as my default for (at least) a little while and see how it compares to Google.
Comment by sirshannon -
I use my SmartPhone outside of my office and when I search for things, I want the results fast. I would much prefer a palm/mobile version of the search results like google.com/palm.
The email-search is cumbersome. My email app downloads only the first handful of bytes of the message. If it’s longer, I need to flag it as “download all” and re-check my email. Switching between the email application to the web browser gets in the way. I would rather hit the back button.
I’m using a Samsung SPH i330 running PalmOS 3.5; EudoraMail, and Handsping Blazer v.2.1 with the images turned off
Comment by ak -
As a very visual person, I really dug the thumbnail image aspect and being able to search by that alone. Also, being able to look at the website without opening another window or leaving the browser is great. Good deal Mark!
M
Comment by Mary -
Alexa data only counts people with the dodgy alexa toolbar doesn’t it? That only works in ie?
It’s a flawed measurement of traffic at best. If you want to know the sites that security & spyware ignorant lemmings go, then perhaps alexa rating is a good stat, but anyone that is internet savvy would disregard it….
Comment by edgar -
The top listings are sponsored – that’s not what I want from a web search. Distinguish the sponsored stuff and don’t try to hide it.
The interface seems slow and is quite boring and sullen feeling, and still is a bit of a google clone. Liven it up!
Icerocket is a bad choice of brand IMHO. One word is what you want – spend some cash and get a good domain, you’ll also get a lot more type in visitors.
But I do love the email search feature – that is cool. If the results where better I would use that.
Comment by edgar -
http://www.riceboypage.com/
Ice rocket seems to be a bit of an unfortunate choice of names in this day and age of over the top aftermarket tuning.
Comment by V -
In the first 10 minutes of using icerocket.com I fell in love with it…cool awesome features…goodbye Google from now on I will be using Icerocket…also very, very fast.
Comment by LJ -
RSS or ATOM feed for search results would be great. Sponsord links should be marked more clearly.
Comment by tg -
I have always wondered why the king of the internet didnt get involved with search engines. Site looks great, cool features, very user friendly.
Comment by David Wilson -
Both searching for “Alfredo” and “Tyromaniac” brings my site as a second result. The first result is a commercial site, like “Look for ”Tyromaniac’ at ebay”. That won’t work. The first ten results must be really relevant.
Comment by Alfredo Octavio -
Mark–didn’t you invest in Mamma.com just about a year ago?
Did that investment not pan out, or are you just so fired up about search that you’re tossing multiple hats in the ring?
Comment by Kyle Bunch -
Where did the name “Ice Rocket” come from? Should I check the site before sending this?
While you’re promoting it why not let users rename it (the search engine) with a contest for some Mavs season tickets going to the winner!
Comment by EW -
I like the quick view and site thumbnails, but I thought the sponsored links were not clearly distinguished. Also, I think you guys could do much better with the sponsored links. I bet FindWhat or Enhance (Ah-Ha) would jump on providing paid results. I have worked with both companies before, and they are very easy to work with.
Comment by paul farris -
Some of the best ideas I have seen in a search engine ever.
Comment by Don Maples -
Is it just me or is the first hit for all sorts of things a link to ebay?
Comment by Nick Reed -
on a quick note: after searching both icerocket and google for ‘toshiba portege’ (without the quotes), google showed up hits for the most recent model in the first page. icerocket had older models as the first 5 or 10 hits, the R100 (the most recent of the series) was first displayed as hit no 9-10 or something.
What I would recommend, that you assign each of your employees to two search engines: one of them should be icerocket and the other ones the major and/or novel search engines distributed evenly across the company. e.g: two guys use icerocket and google, two use icerocket and yahoo, etc. (other engines worth checking out: teoma, alltheweb)
Let them do EVERY search they do on BOTH engines and let them take notes on it. Which engine gives more accurate results? Why? Which one is faster? Can the engines handle queries in foreign languages (handy if you have someone from overseas)? Special characters of foreign languages? There are some non-language-specific special characters that none of the search engines seem to get right: for example if you want to search for ‘some~text!’ instead of ‘some text’… try that on google, it drove me nuts.
I’m sure there are tons of other issues, the point is, let your employees USE the product and compare it with other products.
And don’t forget, that google itself was a newcomer and quickly became the dominant search engine because of its superior technology. So it might not hurt for you to get a basic understanding of the maths stuff… or can you imagine someone managing the Mavs who doesn’t know how to play basketball?
Comment by Zoltan -
“To me, this is a unique way to ‘design my own search engine’.”
Mark, you know what would be cool? If you let searchers design their own search engine also. Before searching, they could decide what aspects are the most important to them with percentages. Mine would be something like 80% link popularity, 15% title tag, and 5% meta tags.
Another thing that would be cool is an open-source search engine. If you had the web community chipping in, it would eventually be a better search engine than Google, just like Linux is a better OS than Windows.
Comment by Entertainment News -
pretty clean, simple, and succinct. I like it so far . . . and hopefully you all can separate from the pack. I usually use yahoo, but I’ll give this place a shot.
I tried “greg lowe calculus” on both yahoo and icerocket. there looks like a small problem with the caps not working out. With yahoo the search took me to my AP Calculus syllabus, but in icerocket, the search came up with all lower case and I was not able to access my page.
A feature I would like to see would be for icerocket to remember my choice of having the “Result Snapshots” either on or off instead of setting it after each search….but maybe that would make the searches slower with the snapshots on all of the time.
ok…good luck. hope this helps.
Comment by greg -
also, mark, i think it would be convenient to have each click on a webpage or picture open in a new window
Comment by Will McKnight -
A feature that I’d really like to see is something like the Google toolbar
Comment by Will McKnight -
HI THERE I WOUNDER IF YOU WILL GET ON TO CELLULAR PHONES LIKE GOOGLE OR YAHOO
Comment by JAMES BRASELTON -
The thumbs take way too long to load.
A lot of people dont have patience in searching (especially techies). I tried this seach engine with some friends at Georgia Tech and it was just too slow. Google is faster. So get the thumbs loading faster and it will improve the site.
Comment by Luke -
I wrote a quick search plugin for Firefox as I couldn’t find one that worked. If anyone is interested you can get it here:
http://rsc112.blogspot.com/2005/02/better-than-google-add-icerocket.html
Comment by Priapo -
This is an article written about our Video Search Technology.
“…At the cost of one-cent per minute…, SiSTeR’s pricing structure is also simple. A one-minute clip that receives one thousand views would cost the advertiser $10US…”
Comment by Tomer -
We would like to partner with IceRocket and allow videos to be posted of the sites. 30 sec. spots that can be automatically created, published and viewed by any PC or MAC in the world for 1cent per minute.
Can you help put me in touch with the managament team?
Comment by Tomer -
I also really like the name. Don´t change it, most people thought google was the worst name ever – and now everybody loves the name just because it sounds so cool…
I also like the idea that some user came up w/ regarding a personal search. But in terms of technology we are propably still years away from that.
Comment by battery -
instead of havoing just email search. do as yahoo and add a email server to your site so when people want to check email they have the search toolbar right there. i know i can use another free email account.
Comment by XxfivestarxX -
Finally someone asked us to think about search and suggest ameliorations…
Why isn’t there any good search engines that uses the favicons of real good sites.
Most quality sites do have a favicon to get noticed once you add them to your favorites.
Pieter Jansegers
NOTA BENE
I’m quite content to find out that the 60 first sites I obtained searching my name (jansegers) are mine.
Yet, at Google and Yahoo it’s only the 20 first ones. So I would like some precise information about the current database size of this search engine.
(I once decides to get me in the top ten listings of all mayor engines, I had some success with that attempt it would seem so.)
Comment by jansegers -
This site is a typical search engine with a few bells/whistles.
You should start from scratch. Let the user type in his question. Then come back with exact results or else a list of refined queries. This is where current search engines fail… inadequate expression of request.
Then provide the bells/whistles, ie. shortcuts and LOTS of previews. Thanks!!!
Comment by musaland -
I do an immense amount of research online on a daily basis and Google is without a doubt significantly better than any other search engine in existance. No where else can you simply key in a 10 digit number with no dashes and it will return a telephone listing if there is one associated. It is nice to see that you have set your sights high as you seem to do in all your endeavors. I have little doubt you will suceed and I look forward to the final result.
Comment by Lissa -
I don’t recommend that the new search engine use alexa, because alexa stinks. Alexa is just whatever people with that toolbar visit, and that toolbar stinks, so most intelligent computer users don’t use it.
Comment by nba rumors -
Google used to be an extremely helpful search engine offering quality page results. Of late, I have found their site to be filled with computer generated junk pages filled with directory styled pages offering no real content. I would hope icerocket search engine would offer its visitors much better quality page results.
Comment by best cell phone deals -
Google used to be extremely helpful in the quality of page results it brought back. Of late, I have found their site to be filled with computer generated junk pages filled with directory styled pages offering no real content. I would hope icerocket would offer its visitors real content and not a bunch of sorry results that waste the visitor’s time.
Comment by best cell phone deals -
One thing is missing from Google that would make IceRocket my number-1 pick right away: the ability to *exclude* phrases.
For example, I want to search for “muppets” but want to exclude all pages that contain the word “ringtone”. Hope you can make it …
Comment by Gerard -
The preview picture idea is exceedingly brilliant. If I’m looking for pictures of Mandy Moore I want to know right away that the site is gonna have pictures and not just links. I did notice that the pictures don’t always represent current content. One site that I go to has been down for at least a couple months now but IRocket still showed a picture of the old site. Not sure if there’s an easy fix for this, or if it’s all that much of a problem.
Often times when I’m doing a search on a subject I want to only look at sites that are homemade or community sites. If I’m stictly looking for info or people’s personal opinions on some subject, I’m usually going to want to avoid commercial sites because they’re usually lacking any meaningful content. It’s just sometimes hard to wade through all the search results before you find a site like this because the corporate sites tend to crowd up the top of the search results.
I don’t even know if this is feasible; and it certainly wouldn’t sit well with business owners.
Comment by Jesse -
I think the guys who came up with this idea are stupid. I mean, seriously. Ice rocket? It soulds like what’s in a Eskimo’s pants.
Comment by John Hendricks -
Ice Rocket looks promising. The “preview” portion and the related searches features might really make this a player. Cool name too, might really rock with the Gen X crowd.
Comment by David -
Ice Rocket really looks cool. The preview windows are a great idea and can really help when you find a page you forgot to mark to favorites. Keep up the clean look of the site. Related searches have a lot of potential.
Comment by David -
Mark.. After going to this site.. entering my name and only getting 5 results.. then comparing those results with other search companies… i have to say…
You just have way to much freakin money.. and you spend it too easily. Seach companies are a dime a dozen even the old good ones lost their way somehow (like dogpile.com) I give this company a 1 in 5 million chance.. and thats even with your financial backing.
Comment by Mike Verinder -
Ask Jeeves already provides a preview of the page in it’s results. It is part of their Smart Search Technology.
Nothing new there – it may even be a patent violation?
Comment by Warren -
1. Mark Cuban is, obviously, extraordinarily brilliant. He and his business partner, Todd Wagner, pulled off two of the greatest business coups of the twentieth century: 1. exchanging Broadcast.com’s ridiculously overpriced illiquid stock for Yahoo’s ridiculouly overpriced liquid stock and 2. liquidating the Yahoo stock befor the “bubble” burst. However, as brilliant as he is, Mark Cuban is not omniscient. He has forgotten more about basketball than I will ever know. But, his recent comments about the stock market are wrong. Indeed, I have probably forgotten more about the stock market than he will ever know! I “discovered” Medtronic in 1966 (at age 14), Intel in 1971 (at age 19) and Flightsafety International in 1975 (at age 23). It is possible to “beat the market” if you know what you are doing. When he was in his prime, Warren Buffett did it consistently. As did Michael Steinhardt and Peter Lynch. I agree that 99.999% of investment professionals are, to a greater or lesser degree, incompetent. But so are 99.999%of the people in every profession. Most attorneys, physicians, teachers, etc. are not “rocket scientists.” Indeed, even most rocket scientists are not “rocket scientists.” MARK CUBAN SHOULD BE VERY THANKFUL FOR THAT FACT! If the “idiots” had not created the internet bubble, he would not be a billionaire.
2. By the way, the next great stock is the only quality company that is a “pure play” on “homeland security” — “American Science and Engineering (ASE on the American Stock Exchange).It is $19.13 but soon will be $30 when they get some government contracts during the September/October federal buying cycle. (If there is a terrorist truck bombing or seaport attack, it will spike to $50.) In the long run, it’s a $100+ stock. They make the most sophisticated equipment to scan trucks and cargo containers for explosives, radioactivity, narcotics, hidden people, etc. While Mark Cuban could not buy a billion dollars worth (ASE’s market cap. is only $144 million), he could turn $5 million into $25 million.
Comment by GAON -
Mark, I have been using IceRocket since you posted the article and this is what I’ve found:
Good Points:
1. It’s Fast
2. It has all of the regular Google features
3. The picture review on the side is nice
Bad Points:
1. The name IceRocket immediately made me think you were associated with RocketSearch – a spam & spyware producing piece of crap for a website. (I still don’t know if you are associated with them)
2. It is TOO much like Google – the pictures on the side are not enough to make me switch.
3. There are more letters in IceRocket than there are in Google, so it takes me more time to type it in the url bar – when I’m in a pinch every second counts.
Comment by Fuzz -
Honestly, I was very impressed with the search engine. Very useful with a lot of cool features. The problem is that it’s easy for Google to add the same features, and MSN is probably going to blow everyone out of the water when search is built into the next OS.
Comment by NBA Rumors -
. . . for a search engine.
Comment by soccer4ever -
I think the idea of being able to e-mail from my blackberry is very functional, allowing me to bypass the time it takes to get to the item I am looking for. For most of us on the go, if I want to get a map or driving directions, which I would think is a logical and often used function, I think it should be an easier process. For example, I typed into the e-mail search “mapquest” and then the address. I got nothing to do with mapquest. I tried “driving directions”, nothing. By that point, I was better off using a bookmark on by Blackberry to get to the correct page. How can this be made easier and more functional for those of us who are always out there.
Comment by David Tannenbaum -
GREAT idea! I like it!
Comment by Catherine Gonzalez -
There’s really not much more you can do to a search engine. I live icerocket, but I don’t seem much of a difference. I’m not a wired head, so I’m sure there are differences, but to the average user, they will never tell. I’m am applications manager and I don’t see anything better or worse than Google. DO you have a toolbar like the Google Toolbar? If not, then I’ll still with googling it.
Comment by Hawk -
We sure need a good alternative to Google to esnure they don´t take over the net.
Comment by Peter -
I gave my wife http://www.icerockets.com instead of http://www.icerocket.com Needless to say she wasn’t pleased
Comment by Dave -
It’s a shame, I think we’ve reached a situation where there are too many spam sites setup with little or no information about thing you search for, usually just 10 or more copied sites.
For example, search for any popular actress and you’ll find reems of pages listing the same information and sometimes even hotlinking pictures from someone else. Some kind of “****-list” needs to be setup where sites with negative ratings can be ranked as such and move down the queue, getting actual humans involved is the key.
Ok, we’re relying on nobody setting up bots to rank their sites but keys or cryptography can achieve that. Icerocket has the snapshot image as a bonus but everything else seems the same as other search engines. The big name search engines have very similar results anyway, if it’s 2 on google it’ll be on the first page on yahoo.
A 1-5 ranking system or simply “found info you wanted: yes or no?” would be easy, just take up one text bar at the top of any external link icerocket searches for. It wouldn’t be annoying or intrusive, if you wanted to say “yes or no” you could, if not, it’d go when you close the IE window or visit another site. If no, it’d return you to your search results.
OK, that relies on people contributing but look at blogger and the open directory system, both work well because so many people help. It wouldn’t be a popup either, just a small 1 line long top bar. Hotmail uses a larger version of the bar i’m talking about when you click a link in a hotmail email that tells you that you are no longer on an MSN site.
WHat do you think?
Comment by Kanes -
I have a Samsung I600 SmartPhone with the 2002 OS. Gotta admit, I really like the Icerocket site in general, but the email search is probably my favorite feature. I’ve tried searching on several topics and have received quick responses and a good list of topics returned. I wouldn’t feel that this is a solution to “serious” web searching, but I’ve found myself pretty addicted to it. I think it’s a great start…and have recommended my friends at work (computer geeks like me) to use it. Ha kinda sounds like a bad tv commercial! Thanks for the service!
Comment by Simants -
I tried the Rocket and it’s a cool idea having the thumbnails of pages right next to the search results. What I would really like in a search engine would be some AI that would read the text of the page and understand what I was looking for. Anyway, looks cool and fresh, but I’m sure Google can catch up and do the same thing in no time.
Nuno H
Portugal
Comment by Nuno H -
Finally got to see the trailer for the Benefactor. Mark, after Momma, Ice Rocket and the Benefactor which are all knock-offs of established, successful, innovative companies and concepts, why not try to invent online auctions next? Or maybe you could invent a company that sells books and CD’s online? Personally, I think you are better than all of this. It just hasn’t shown lately.
Comment by J-Birds -
It doesn’t really matter to me but it doesn’t make me want to use icerocket over google. Maybe a nice unique look would change that for me….and maybe otherse.
Comment by vanlandw -
if it mimics the look of google, who cares? the layout there is easily accessible and typical of most search engines.
what i want to see, is if icerocket can conquer the popularity of google.
Comment by roger -
I am working on having Rich UI and having real relations between topics. I plan to show this to Mark C.
.V
Comment by Vic Cekvenich -
Could it mimic google anymore than it already does?
Get a new look.
Comment by Sanchez -
Mark, just wanted to say that i love the site image captures that come along with the search results. i think that that is a great option.
Comment by James Miller -
There’s some good features on Icerocket, but they are all available elsewhere (moregoogle.com, findforward.com).
Icerocket will have to offer something new to get noticed. Also, building it’s own index would make it stand out from all the other meta search engines out there.
Comment by Rob -
this site seems to be a little to similar to google. your team of programmers should maybe work on giving this search it’s own idenity…or at least a reason not to use google because it seems to offer everything google already does
Comment by vanlandw -
Mycroft firefox extension for icerocket available?
In
http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html you can add some engines as embedded search engines in firefox. Would it be possible to add icerocket? Love your search engine!
Comment by paolo -
please look my blog.
but.sorry only japanese
Comment by oltucho -
i cant wait to see how this goes with the tech related media.
Comment by roger -
I have been using icerocket.com, and this is a trivial suggestion. I like using the “quickview.” However, in order to hit “back” while viewing several pages through the quickview, the cursor had to be pushed up to the top of the webbrowser. I think, quick view would be more efficient if the “back” and “foward” tab buttons were also adjacent to the “quickview” button.
Comment by rich -
Along with you taking on Google in the Search Engine field, I have a great idea for you if you may be considering tackling the email/messenger side of things as well! Drop me a line if you want to hear more! The messenger part incorporates VoIP technology!
Great blogs by the way!
Comment by Bradley -
Marc, what do you think about the coming search wars?
“At the Wall Street Journal’s second annual D Conference in June, Bill Gates defended his company’s plans to enter the search arena. In an interview conducted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Mr. Gates explained why Microsoft will someday be a better alternative than Google.”
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=5128_0_1_0_C
Inside the Mind of Jeff Bezos
“It’s hard to predict how Amazon will change in the next few years because Bezos is so committed to radical innovation. Bezos himself doesn’t really know what will happen. “We have this weirdness in our business,” he says. “The raw ingredients that make our business — things like CPU processing power, bandwidth, and disk space — get twice as cheap every 12 to 18 months. Disk space is 30 times cheaper today than it was five years ago. Thirty times cheaper! So the real question becomes, What can you do with 30 times as much disk space, 20 times as much computing power, and 30 times as much bandwidth? All right, how are you going to make customers happy with that? It turns out that these are not easy questions to answer.”
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/85/bezos_1.html
See also:
http://divedi.blogspot.com/2004/08/search-wars.html
Comment by Dimitar Vesselinov -
At least your design looks like google, however the search results are no were close. I think its going to be hard to gain an edge on google. They have more time going on their project.
Comment by Ronnie -
Um … correct spelling and actual sentences would be a good start. This is what I got when I just searched.
Temporary Maintance
Our apologies. We are very sorry for the inconvenience due the maintance of the service.
Comment by Andy -
“Knowledge management is a joke and search technologies are overrated.”
“Today we sit in the midst of the information revolution and still don’t know the value of the most fundamental resource that drives our global economy: information. The benefits of the information revolution won’t be realized until bottom-up, market-based valuation of daily information exchanges emerges.”
“Search technologies, no matter how sophisticated, can’t capture the implicit value that humans inherently place on information and relationships. Today “search technologies” continue to command great attention and funding (Google) as “the solution” to the “info glut” problems that arise from working in an information economy.”
“Bottom-up information valuation of highly nuanced information will enable markets in everything. In the process, information valuation will transform the future of work, organizational cultures, eliminate information overload, and finally make knowledge measurement (and thus management) a reality.”
http://www.corante.com/brainwaves/archives/004919.html
See also:
http://divedi.blogspot.com/2004/08/knowledge-measurement.html
Comment by Dimitar Vesselinov -
Nice and powerful. I plan to play around with some of the hacks that I use in Google – as detailed in the book ‘Google Hacks’ which made my goodle experience more productive.
I hope this project works for you.
Is it possible to have the site installed as a Mozilla Plugin? Makes it handy to have the search bar on my browser. I have google and Vivismo there now – would love to add icerocket.
Comment by Christopher Cooper -
Mark, Glad to see you getting involved in the search business! I run Ohio’s largest regional directory – OhioBiz (www.ohiobiz.com). I remember speaking with you back in 1995 at Boston Internet World! My, how has the world changed since back then! I’d like to see you shake this industry up a bit!!
Good luck and keep up the great effort and spirit!
Mark Geyman
OhioBiz
Comment by Mark Geyman -
Mark – What are your thoughts on search optimization companies? In particular, take a look at what Websourced (sub of CGI Holding)has been doing.
Comment by RTB98 -
I did a quick search for a plugin to use Icerocket directly from the search box that is built into the navigation toolbar for firefox and could not find one… having one would make icerocket my default search engine.
I will look into making one.
Comment by John Kopanas -
I tried icerocket email search.Perhaps AOL/CS users cannot get the results as direct links it happens alot.I had to copy and paste the results.Why would I waste my time?
Email response was slow.By the time I got the email results I could have completed a search.But I agree with another poster it is predictable half the responses are patronizing and half are just busting your balls.
Comment by jff -
I really like the design of Icerocket. Tried also some searches but the fact Google is not included is a kind of hole. Yahoo is not 100% comparable to Google. Think you should propose yourself not as competitor of Google but as partner.
Manuel
http://www.kuori.com
Comment by Manuel Bulgari -
I read about the icerocket.com website while looking over the cnet.com website. I’ve already made it the home page on my Mozilla web browser. The best test for any search engine is how well it does finding musical content (RIAA, if you are monitoring this blog, don’t read anymore). It found a good amount of content so of course the RIAA will be up in arms.
Rob in Houston
Comment by Rob -
Being a big businessman, Mark you should put comments responcibaly. I think you last investment venture mamma.com has same kind of features except few one. Buidling website like this is not difficult job considering the web services available from other engines. Something will be really innovative if you have new search technology and then you can say watch out google. Not for this one.
People must be questioning your stake in this company bcoz i saw earlier that your investment in mamma.com made news and share shot up and then you backed away and then company is again in disarry. Considering that you have not put any link on forum for this website beside in current post, you have no investment relations with this company.
But again use your words carefully.
Comment by Kedar -
Have you looked at Pittsburgh based http://www.vivisimo.com for meta search and clustering capabilites?
Even people in Cleveland like it!!
Comment by Dave Goebel -
come on mark update you blog! I want to get the inside scoop on the mav trade.
Comment by jon k -
Found google.com as the first result when I input “google” for the search. Better than I can say for all the other “revolutionary” search engines I checked out.
Comment by everlong -
Mark, we could use a benefactor like yourself in addition to your expertise. Contact Pete Best we can discuss http://www.BestNews.Com as well. Thank you, PB
Comment by Peter Best -
Mark, ever notice that some people will always suck up because of who you are and some people will always bomb you because of who you are? Bottom line is that the world doesn’t need another search engine. There’s not enough product differentiation to declare Ice Rocket as anything other than a me too product. I searched for our site, J-Birds.com, and the results were about the same as Google. I hope you profit from the pub you are giving this product but don’t quit your day job.
Comment by J-Birds -
I’m 99.9% certain the thumbshots are from http://www.thumbshots.org/ – nothing wrong with that and good move leveraging this cool use of technology. The only “bummer” is that they only show that top-level page, so for instance, do a search for “hulkmobile” and look at the top entry which should be http://www.komar.org/hulk/ … but the thumbnail is from the http://www.komar.org/ … so you don’t get to see the Big Green Guy 😉
Related to that, they are dropping the trailing / if the URL has a pathname component – i.e. above they show http://www.komar.org/hulk … which works, but requires the web server to do a redirect and is kinda sloppy … but hey, they are in good company as Microsoft and Yahoo make this same mistake – I did send ’em feedback about this minor boo-boo.
Liked it Mark … a LOT (I’ve actually used beforehand) … once you are done investing in search engines, how about my webcam controllable Christmas Lights at http://www.komar.org/xmas/ 😉
Comment by hulkster -
Some good ideas for sure. The thumbnail is interesting – could be a great feature. With that said, it is too much of a clone at this stage. Also, you can email google results already. And, if this were to take off, I smell a lawsuit coming. All of those quick view results framed within the engine?? – not quite the same as caching. Also, google toolbar and the word-find buttons are key.
Comment by Chevsky -
With the curiously placed ‘curved’ rocket on the main page, does anybody else think this is a not-so-subtle way of saying rice rocket?
Change the name and lose the nearly identical Google layout before any lawsuits roll in.
Otherwise, its a novel concept and I like the little preview thumbnail funtion. I’ll stick w/ Google for the time being however.
Comment by razorsheldon -
The reason I changed to google years ago was the cached pages.
This is a “me too” unless you get cached pages with the other services.
Toolbar would also be helpfull.
Watch Out Bank Account would be a better title for this.
Good luck
Comment by Big Phil -
Take a lesson from Vivisimo.com
Organize/cluster the search results for faster access…
After looking at IceRocket and the rest of the competition, I’ll be using Vivisimo from now on for my searching…
Comment by DFrey -
As a google fanatic (it’s my homepage, I get google alerts, I use blogger, just joined orkut, etc) this one will be pretty hard.
But here is one thing that will make me an IceRocket fan; something that no search engine seems to have yet: Get rid of multiple entries…
I’m still waiting for the day when I can do a search and only get one entry on a topic from a source instead of multiple entries from one source.
I’ll give RocketDog a whirl though….
Comment by The Mad Dater -
IceRocket offers no additionnal features that will bring the loyal Google users to use this new meta search.
Comment by Mark Dube -
The thumbnails are sweet. Where did they come from? Alexa? It just doesn’t seem as fast as google though…
Comment by Duncan -
i love the thumbnails.
can’t wait to tell my filmmaker and art director buddies.
thanks Mark for giving us the heads up and improving the quality of life.
Comment by cheri/benebe -
It’s always a struggle to keep a business website somewhere near the top of the list on the search engines. The thumbnails on icerocket give the average business wesbsite owner an additional angle to compete for business. If your front page looks better than the 3 to 5 sites that are rated above you in a search the first click that the searcher may likely make is onto your website! I beleive it will work well for my business website. I think it is equally advantageous to the “searcher” That fact alone gives me incentive to support icerocket.com.
Comment by Rubber chicken guy -
When I was growing up, I was taught not to go into other people’s homes and make a mess. Yes, the serach engine needs some work, but he is asking questiongs to find out what users think. The search methods need quite a bit of work, but then again they are making a good profit off the adds. It’s not nearly as good as yahoo or google. But, its just a little bit behind excite if they change some of the search methods to make it more functional.
The search engine is not total crap. Google and Yahoo might fit America, but what about other countries…They are getting a run for their money in China….and other Asian markets…Last time I was down in Latin America, not a whole lot of googling go on..so Irocket might find its niche…
But, please limit the commits…many of us…enjoy reading and posting responses…..Although you could argue that just because society says a word is bad…does not mean that its bad…its just a word…so, I guess we have to take it into context how you used…and thus…it has no purpose.
Comment by slw1234 -
Well, so far I like the icerocket and I started telling some of my friends about it.
I also really like the name. Don´t change it, most people thought google was the worst name ever – and now everybody loves the name just because it sounds so cool…
I also like the idea that some user came up w/ regarding a personal search. But in terms of technology we are propably still years away from that.
Besides that, I would like to see more info on the whole project on the page. And something that would make people want to spread the word… 😉
Comment by Jan Sessenhausen -
There are so many search engines out there and only one that is worth using, Google. I do not work for them but am very loyal to the way their engine works. It’s saved me so much time and effort that it’ll take a lot for me to stop trusting them. Icerocket isn’t going to take anything from google. All of their ‘features’ are either already on Google or don’t work properly. Why would anyone want to compete with Google at this point with their popularity and impending IPO?
Also, the Alexa thing is worthless. Nobody uses that toolbar, it’s a horribly skewed measurement.
Comment by Adam -
Mark, what is the difference between the search engines that are popular and those that are not? -My guess would be how quickly you can type it in. I can type yahoo or google faster then I can same them. “icerocket” takes alot longer, and thus nowhere near as convenient. In fact I quit using yahoo, because i can type in google so much quicker. I know its probably too late in the game for you to account for this, but I just wanted to give me two cents.
Which begs the question, if its a penny for your thoughts, but you have to put 2 cents in, where is that extra penny going? Someone is making a fortune.
Comment by Greg Wilson -
does anyone else get broken links for the thumbnails when doing a search??
even if icerocket is better(too early to say it is), google has so much brand equity right now its going to be hard to overtake google. that does not mean ice rocket wont be successful, take ask jeeves for example. very succuessful search engine. if yahoo can overtake google with all their money, i douubt anyone other than microsoft can. Im still dumbfounded at yahoo giving you 6BILLION!!!!!!!!.
Comment by Ashwin -
excellent site with great features and relevant search results
Comment by Glen LeBarr -
awesome. a google clone that breaks mixed-case URLs, favors sponsored links, and an absolutely terrible name.
good luck.
Comment by Ed -
I would have to say that investing in a search engine goes right along with the search engine craze, but it’s too little too late.
Icerocket is not offering much of anything new, other than a couple interface options. Search engines such as askjeeves and others already offer thumbnail views… this one is trying to offer too many things.
No one is overthrowing Google or Yahoo or MSN anytime soon. Icerocket should take a cue from Amazon’s new A9 search engine… Use the Google search technology, but slap a new interface on it.
The only other market still out there for search engines is in “niche” search markets, such as news search, picture search, audio search, video search, etc… “Icerocket” needs a focus. Following the Google model isn’t a bad idea… They started with web search… then added pictures, then news, then products…
There are also several problems with Icerocket…
1.) Meta search is dead… the concept already proved itself out with the death of webcrawler, etc…
2.) The relevancy of many of the searches I conducted on Icerocket was horrible… In a search for “Dell”, I got support.dell.com as the first result. the main dell site ranked below Dell Japan and some Dell landing strip site.
3.) That “Find a Friend” thing is awful…
Comment by John -
good luck with that …. talk about a high risk play !!!!!
Comment by Mike Verinder -