Web 2.0 Conference Unveils New Search Engine

During the Web 2.0 (www.web2con.com) conference held on Hotel Nikko San Francisco on Tuesday, Gross unveiled search-engine Snap (www.snap.com) , which has combined terabytes of click-stream data and advertising conversions rates to remodel search-result relevancy.

Gross said that Snap, available in a public beta, is focused on "search productivity" by letting users control the way results are sorted, by including user feedback into relevancy and by opening the inner workings of the engine.

"The problem we see in search is that it takes too long to find what you are looking for," said Gross, chairman and CEO of Pasadena, Calif.-based Idealab, during an interview.

Using technology licensed from fellow Idealab company X1 Technologies Inc., Snap lets users refine results in real time by entering more specific terms within a separate query box.

As an example, Gross demonstrated how a user typing in a search for "Jaguar" would receive hundreds of results but could home in on those dealing with the Macintosh operating system by typing "OS" into the query.

One of the other questions discussed in the workshops was "Does RSS destroy centralized marketplaces when commerce and marketing enters the picture?"  Vastly discussed was the future of eBay and the perspective the online store giant to become a recommendation engine.