Little Engines That Can

摘要

A google search for the phrase "apple tree" draws 2.4 million results, all tucked into an endless, impenetrable catalog of blue links. Entrepreneur R. J. Pittman thinks that's a few too many. "Traditional search engines don't solve the information-overload problem," he says. His Sausalito, Calif., startup, Groxis, is working on a solution. Its downloadable software tool, Grokker, sits on the desktop, plugs queries into the major search engines and uses home-cooked algorithms to analyze the pages and organize them into categories. Then it renders those categories on the screen in an easy-to-parse, graphical display of circles and squares. Grokker is available on the Net for $50 while the company tests a free, ad-supported version. "Search on the Internet needs to graduate to the next level," Pittman says.