An Italian professor who was the inspiration for Google has launched his own search engine called Volunia, searchengineland.com reports.
Massimo Marchiori devised an algorithm in the early 90s for HyperSearch that paved the way for modern search engines including Google and Bing. Google even cited Marchiori’s influence when introducing its page rank feature, now a central plank of Google’s algorithm.
In the years that followed, Marchiori turned down a great many invites to work on other search engines, though has now returned with his own creation, Volunia.
Explaining his creation, Marchiori took to Google-owned YouTube, explaining how he sought to create something new as opposed to an evolution of the other search engines currently challenging Google’s market share.
“Volunia is not just a classic search engine, not Google or [an] other web search engine plus ten per cent,” wsj.com cites Marchiori as saying.
“It’s a new radical view of what the search engine of the future could be. An ambitious project localised in 12 languages, covering all the contents of the world.”
Amongst the differences Volunia offers users are higher-level site previews than its competitors, a multimedia search-within-a-site function and a “social lawyer”, which promotes social networking and sharing amongst users.
Whether Volunia lives up to Marchiori’s pedigree is yet to be seen, however, with Google being the first choice for many web users and businesses using search marketing. Whilst Volunia’s results are yet to be seen, many commentators have suggested that it would take something extra special to topple Google, with the search engine having escalated too far beyond its peers to make competition viable.
