IT Milk: entry

I was surprised to see an article about a developing search engine in Korea called Rebi. It’s interesting because the Korean newspapers claim that Rebi’s concept is so groundbreaking that it plans to overtake Google’s share in the world market. What surprised me most was that the article completely misunderstands and bashes Google. It’s nothing new that the Koreans are belittling things American, because of the country’s long-known inferiority complex and its need to stand proud using every possible reason. But this new search engine is a ridiculous entrepreneurial scam, and everyone is Korea seems to be falling for it because they don’t understand search engines. Koreans are exceptionally talented at cooking up hoaxes, just like the recent Dr. Hwang’s cloning scam.

“Google and Naver have lost touch with their dreams of improving search technologies because they are too focused on making profit from their search engines,” claims the Rebi team, “but we’re building a company with a completely different attitude.” I don’t know about Naver, but Google’s original purpose was to improve the users’ search experience by avoiding things like paid inclusion. And Google is doing a good job at maintaining its direction even with its recent monopolistic activities. So Rebi is not cracking out of an eggshell with an original idea, as the Korean media is trying to make it seem. And it’s so obvious that Rebi is riding on the story of Google because their website even says “We Will Make Korea’s Version Of The Stanford-Google Story.”

Additionally, Rebi states that “search engine technology must be exposed to the users for complete transparency.” But a mainstream search engine cannot reveal the complex intricacies of its search algorithm, because that would be a viagra-spammer’s dream come true. With the complete knowledge of how to optimize the search engine in hand, a SEO would play Rebi like Cassanova. Note that this would also dismantle professional search agencies like SEOmoz and PepperjamSearch, and it would also drain the adrenaline rush out of SEO for many people.

So Rebi has named their new algorithm the Credibility Estimation Algorithm. This is exactly quoted from their website with my translation (don’t trust it? fuck you).

The technology that Rebi has developed is called “Credibility Estimation Algorithm.”

Rebi collects estimated reputations of all indexed websites and shows the user the resulting rankings after minimizing the standard deviance.

As opposed to Google, which shows results based on clicks, Rebi’s rankings are based on site reputation.

The part highlighted in red made me angry. What the hell is this journalist talking about? Does he have pay-per-click and organic confused? When did click-through-rate affect organic search results for Google? That means that spammers with hordes of click bots would be capable of beating the shit out of the Google algorithm. And why is Rebi stealing Google’s idea of “site reputation”? That’s exactly the idea that Google works off of: trust rank.

Also, in the article, the writer tries to hype up the story by drawing (lame) parallels between Rebi and the current mainstream search engines.

• Google’s founders were grad students at Stanford University (one of the top educational institutions in the US), while Rebi’s founders were grad students at the ultra-prestigious Seoul University.
• Rebi plans to gain a foothold in the US market by setting up its headquarters in San Francisco, very close to the Googleplex
• Rebi is currently occupying office space in the birthplace of Naver. I’m sure that this was a publicity move on their part that was supposed to draw responses like “Oh shit, these guys might be the next Naver! They’re even using the exact same office!”

I don’t know where the hell this group of 7 Korean Seoul University grads came up with the name Rebi. When you go to their website at www.rebi.co.kr, the title says “Are you ready? Yes! I’m Rebi.” It’s a cute Korean play on words, which is neither funny or witty… Just like all the grungy Korean t-shirts that have senseless English sentences pasted on them…