Qrobe.it Mixes Google and Bing in Single Interface
Qrobe= Google + Bing+ Ask
About two weeks ago, a startup based in Alexandria, Minnesota by the name of Striquent quietly launched a new website that combines results from major search engines. "The idea for qrobe.it was born out of a discussion on if the search experience can be improved upon or as the saying goes 'one can't improve what is already perfect,'" Nisha Boban, QA Analyst at Striquent.
"So what we did is focus on the user experience and meshed together the best of the Web, search results from Google, Bing and Ask, with ability to instantly share a URL with the leading social sites, save it, shorten it, verify it, etc."
Boban believes Google came very close to perfecting the search experience many years ago, but since then the Web has moved on and the search giant has not changed its service much. Microsoft, on the other hand, rebranded its search engine by launching Bing "with a host of very good features," but could have done a better job with branding (making the homepage pretty doesn't cut it), she says.
Qrobe takes the results from both (by default it doesn't include Ask results for the sake of performance, but you can choose to include them). Striquent wanted to include the top three search engines, but skipped out on Yahoo due to the 10-year Microhoo deal which may have Bing powering Yahoo and would result in "redundant results" for Qrobe.
It also implements features exclusive to Bing, like instant answers for recipes and infinite scrolling (Bing only does this for the Images section, but Qrobe does it for Web as well). It's worth noting that an earlier Live Search beta had infinite scrolling, but Microsoft ultimately dropped it. Striquent had a lot of technical problems implementing the feature, especially with the use of the browser's back button, but it really was "nothing Microsoft couldn't have solved."
Comments
Be the first to write a comment
You must me logged in to write a comment.