The Technology Behind SPH Search

FAST Search & Transfer logo The new search engine backed by Singapore media giant Singapore Press Holding Ltd, SPH Search will be powered by techonology developed by Fast Search & Transfer ASA.

According to Wikipedia, “FAST focuses on enterprise real-time data search technologies. It originally owned the web search-engine AlltheWeb as which was later sold to Overture in 2003, now part of Yahoo!.”

So are we talking about a first generation search engine technology that got “eaten up” by Yahoo in 2003?

Now that FAST had changed and focused on enterprise real-time data search technologies, it was still not doing too well lately(Aug 2007) - at least not in the eyes of those 148 people who got retrenched by the company.

Mark Logic’s CEO, Dave Kellogg reported some interesting insight into FAST layoff and financial figures in his blog titled:

Fast Search: The Blood-Letting Begins

Layoff of 148 employees
Reduction in operating costs of approximately $12M/quarter
Up to a $55M one-time restructuring charge
Of which $25M will be cash (e.g., severance)
And remaining up to $30M will be non-cash

Enterprise Search Technology

According to my research, the FAST enterprise search technology has been implemented successfully with many big corporations, especially media companies in the USA and Europe.

And recently, it has expanded to Asia, partnering with media company in Japan to provide mobile search and advertising.

SPH is just one of FAST many enterprise search customers since she joint venture with Schibsted International Classifieds & Search AS to form SPH Search. You see, Schibsted is a big customer of FAST since 2005. So it is quite apparent that commercial relationship here is rather complicated and we shall leave that discussion to another article.

Here’s an interview with John Lervik, CEO of Fast Search & Transfer:

Click Here

Is FAST Enterprise Search Good Enough for Singapore Inc?

I got this impression that since we are such a small country, we can just get a search engine software off the shelve and indexed everything about Singapore and serve the information to “people anywhere in the world who want content about Singapore”.

However, if SPH Search plans to target “people anywhere in the world” then it is no longer an enterprise model.

Does SPH Search knows what information people anywhere in the world are looking for about Singapore?

SPH Search for searching SPH web pages

Or is it just to provide a search engine to filter all of SPH owned web pages. And then, when people search for information that can be found in SPH web pages, you will be served with sponsored ads from SPH and not from Google.

If SPH wants to make profit then it is not search engine technology that SPH needs, it needs online advertising technology.

Hopefully, we can get a good search engine with relevant information about Singapore and SPH will not lose too much money.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 2:55 pm and is filed under SPH Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Navigation

2 Responses to “The Technology Behind SPH Search”

SPH Search vs Google? Says:
November 3rd, 2007 at 3:01 pm
[...] I will appreciate it if you were to leave your thoughts in the comment box. This is the first article of a series which focuses on SPH Search. In the next post, we will discuss the technology behind SPH Search. [...]
How Fast is Google Indexing Your Site? Says:
April 15th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
[...] Today, 15 April 2008, less than 4 weeks after Google first indexed Rednano.sg, Google has indexed more than 50,000 pages of Rednano.sg. I have this feeling that Google engineers know more about Rednano.sg than the people at SPH Search. [...]