Why Mahalo Sucks
Have you heard of ‘Mahalo’? No? Well, here’s an excerpt from their FAQs:
Mahalo is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms.
Hm. Ironically enough, uncov has written about Mahalo many times, each time speaking to what degree of “fail” it is. That’s really no surprise…
Are You Stupid?
Read this. It’s from Jason Calacanis’ blog. Does it make you laugh so hard you wet yourself? It should. Why? I think it’s pretty obvious… it takes at least 24 hours for a page to be created on a topic, and only if they get enough requests for it. The example shown is “grey wolf”, which you would think is common enough to warrant a page.
Thank you, Stewie. You said it so perfectly.
I’m Sorry…
I’m sorry, but I thought Google already did this. Maybe I’m wrong, but when you search for something in Google, you always get results. And, chances are that you get exactly what you were looking for within the first result or two. It’s like magic, except that it’s created by a computer. Which means that there is no delay time, no time wasted on “people search” or other such craptastic nonsense.
Kompubers R Kool
In this age of “Web 2.0″, you’d think that people would understand how the Internet works. Or at least that you can use a “search engine” to “find” certain “things” on “teh Intorwebz”. Without the “help” of “human beings”.
Were there enough ironic quotes there for you to get my meaning?
Stop It.
Let’s be serious for a second. Google became popular because it returned results on exactly what you were looking for, all the time. And it was simple and uncluttered. So that begs the question: why, in God’s bloody name, do you think you can compete with Google? More importantly, how can a relatively small group of underpaid and probably not-very-educated people do better than a computer?
Keep it up, Mahalo Guides!
Here’s some simple facts (you = Mahalo):
- You will never be able to produce results for every topic people want to know about.
- Your results will never be as relevant or up-to-date as real search engines.
- You are not a search engine. “Engine” implies algorithms. Which are not made of people.
- You are a “glorified” wiki. And I mean that in the sense that you over-value yourself, because you are worthless, and are actually of less value than a wiki devoted entirely to kiwi fruit.
I Think…
I think you should quit. I would say “while you’re ahead”, but you’re clearly not ahead. You’re living somewhere around 1992, dial-up and everything.
Stop wasting VC money. Stop wasting people’s time. And, most importantly, stop making real engineers and programmers look bad by pretending you know what you’re doing.
Jason Calacanis, you are a stupid stupid bastard with a self-inflated ego of worthlessness.
