"Commercial search-engine providers soon could face a serious competitor if the vision of some open-source developers materializes. A team of open-source programmers recently launched a project called Nutch to provide search-engine software for free...."Right now, Nutch does not have the hardware that it needs to offer a search engine on Google's scale," he noted. "They do have a very impressive board and an extremely talented staff -- not to mention financial backing by Overture. Ironically, according to Winfield, one potential problem with Nutch's approach could be the very element that the organization seems most proud of -- the fact that people will be able to see the exact formula for determining results. "This could lead to some really bad spamming," said Winfield.
"Nutch will be an interesting one to watch," he said, pointing out that an open-source search technology has the capacity to shake things up in the coming months. "If Nutch can figure out a way to keep people honest and still be completely forthcoming with the formulas used for their results," he said, "that will be a site to behold."
posted by Jen @ 9:49 AM
<< Home