[Reader-list] India's First Search Engine

[t.ray at vsnl.com]

Aman, Anamika and Kiran,

I think India *can* be seen as a comunity if you go by one of the broader definitions from COD: "the people of an area or country considered collectively".

The problem with Shivam's thinking, in my understanding, is that he seems to be mixing up the search engine as an instrument for locating pages with certain characteristics specified by the user, with the internet's characteristics as a seamless information space. In other words, it's a confusion between two analytical levels.

I haven't had time to check out guruji's functionality, but I do wish they would use another name. The present one seems to have too strong a reference to the Hindu (and Hindi) tradition. That might offend some sensibilities. However, it is a private company and its owners have a right to name it the way they want as long as it's not against the law ... don't ask me which law, Indian or the law of any country where the net is accessible, because I can't even begin to answer that one.

Best,

Tapas



>I think the more interesting bit is, when they describe something as  
> "Indian so and so", exactly what does "Indian" mean here?
> 
> The most typical use is when some site claims to be a replica of a  
> more famous site "for the Indian community", which begs the question:  
> is India a community?
> 
> Usually, not. The typical Indian doesn't go online to meet other  
> Indians. They are likelier to go looking for like-minded people under  
> more specific categorisation, like people who are in the same  
> profession as them, have similar political views, similar ethnic  
> background, or otherwise. "India" is too broad to appeal here. A site  
> may as well serve all Internet users worldwide but figure out how to  
> present a personalised view to each user depending on what they are  
> likely to be interested in.
> 
> India does become a valid community in the context of a matrimonial  
> site owing to the peculiarities of this tradition, but regional  
> communities are even stronger, accounting for the spate of regional  
> matrimonial sites, and the clear categorisation in pan-India sites.  
> Here it is a tussle between community identity and brand recall.
> 
> On the other hand, when a site like 70mm seeks to replicate NetFlix  
> in "India", they are referring to the geographical and legal region  
> of India. This too is a valid category. The dynamics of distributing  
> movies from India to India is very different from distribution from  
> India to Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka (or from NetFlix in the US  
> to customers in India).
> 
> Summary: making an India-specific site for reason of the dynamics of  
> doing business in India is good, while being India-specific because  
> you think your users will want to restrict themselves to that is bad.
> 
> Witness how there are several successful examples of e-commerce sites  
> in India, while practically none of search engines or social  
> networking sites.
> 
> At the moment, neither Raftaar nor Guruji appear to have any edge  
> over Google. Their results may be more relevant, but that is not  
> sufficient. They don't do worldwide searches, so one still has to use  
> Google for that, and when India-specific results are needed, it's  
> easier to check the box in Google than to remember to use a wholly  
> different website with a new UI (the pages may appear similar, but UI  
> is more than just appearance).
> 
> Raftaar's USP is that they can read and index pages that use an  
> encoding scheme other than Unicode. This is valid, but not sufficient  
> to give them traction, and will only work while there's a  
> sufficiently large userbase for such sites, and only until Google  
> implements the same. In other words, it's a dead end street.
> 
> Kiran
> 
> 
> On 13/Oct/2006, at 7:21 PM, Anamika Bhatnagar wrote:
> 
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> Even I tend to agree with Tapas. We need to be careful with the  
>> words we use...I see nothing wrong in having an Indian search  
>> engine. Agreed there may be marketing stunts involved and the fact  
>> that both the founders are from IIT and want to use it for  
>> branding...I see nothing wrong in it...why call it an IIT publicity  
>> stunt?!
>>
>> It is not even on their front page...of guruju.com staring into our  
>> eyes saying it has been made by two IITians. It is there in their  
>> biographies. If they don't put it there, where will they put it?
>>
>> anamika.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Kiran Jonnalagadda
> http://jace.seacrow.com/