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Quintura - Is A Visual Search Engine The Better Way to Find Information?
By Rob | April 17, 2007
Search is a very difficult problem to solve. When a user enters a keyword into a search engine, what exactly does she mean by it? Does she want to find a specific match? Does she want to run a query and show everything related to her search? Does she want to browse a certain area of knowledge? It’s hard to say. Search terms are ambiguous.
One Russian startup is trying to solve this problem by making search more visual. Quintura was founded by experts in neural networks and artificial intelligence. The home page is split into two sides - one that displays search results and the other that displays a list of tags to let you refine the context of your search.
For instance, if I type “business” into Quintura, I am presented with tags like: small, development, finance, opportunity. Hovering over the “small” tag can help refine the search further by showing sub-tags like:owners, administration, united states. Clicking on any of these tags instantly refines your search results list.
Quintura differs from other search engines by offering a downloadable search client for your desktop, and a special version of their search engine just for kids.
Quintura is funded by Mangrove Capital of Luxembourg. It’s unclear at the moment whether their monetization strategy will be advertising, or to hold out for an acquisition.
Outside the Valley Score
Location: Moscow = 3
Founders: Second Time Entrepreneurs = 1
Technology: Some proprietary = 1
Funding: VC Funding = 1
Total Score - 6 Can a company outside the valley compete with the likes of Google? Keep an eye on Quintura and find out.
Topics: Startups, International |
April 17th, 2007 at 10:55 am
We are going to turn Quintura into a social networking search portal to beat GYMA. Stay tuned to our developments!