French service KartOO visualizes search data

Written on 21st April 2008                                                                                                              5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

We keep running into people who are making interesting search applications. Like Laurent Baleydier, the CEO of KartOO technologies. Over a coffee at the altsearchengines day, he told us that KartOO specializes in visualizing internet and intranet data to improve the accessibility of search engines. The techniques are developed in the French University Labs in Clermont, France.

Next Web editor Boris and KartOO president Laurent Beleydier

KartOO runs three search engines. KartOO.com – a free Meta search engine that allows you to find your results trough in interactive map -, UJIKO.com – a social thumbs up/down engine -, and KVisu.com – a rather spectacular engine that shows your search data as a land map.

The engines have at least one thing in common: impressive graphics. Whether it’s your style or not, you can’t deny that KartOO understands that you have to spoil the eyes when it comes to visualization. Some other search engines, like Quintura, seem to forget that.

I also like the fact that KartOO uses the engines of Yahoo and Google, since a lot of people are still a bit hesitated to use another engine than Google. The alt search engines are really important, as they are the pioneers who invent our search future. Yet when it comes to a quick search, people still use the search giant. When services like KartOO build on the strength of Google and make it a richer tool, I think they have a better chance to bridge the gap between Google and alternative search engines.