Newsmaker: The answer man

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model. We survived long enough to go back to consumer.

How much do you think the foray into enterprise search hurt the company?
Rosenschein: In the past, it hurt a lot. In the long run, we hope we're perfectly positioned to go to the next step. We're extremely excited with user response to our product. People seem to love Answers.com because it provides different experience from the search engines. I don't see it as competition--it supplements and complements what they do. I'd love to partner with more of them.

One of your sources is Wikipedia. Why did you choose it, and what are your thoughts on it as an encyclopedia?
Rosenschein: We love it. We also use Columbia University Press and Houghton Mifflin, but Wikipedia has a currency and a breadth that's very impressive. It has a high average quality, but obviously because it's user input, not every one of the entries is going to be high editorial quality. We accept that, and we have a disclaimer to that effect. But it's a fast-growing and lively data source. We're proud that it's part of our offering.

How did you score the deal to provide Google's definition links?
Rosenschein: They evaluated our service and decided to point that traffic to it. We're very excited and hope it continues to drive traffic and grows, especially as we add more languages and things like that. It has helped in very positive ways, but it still provides well under half of our queries. In terms of the deal, there's no magic there, they just liked it. I think it underscores that we're a reference product, in their view, and there (are) many things they could do in that arena.

Like what?

You can only imagine that people with smart phones will be more interested in the kinds of rapid information we offer.

Rosenschein: Right now it's a definition link. I hope they get more interested in reference too. I'd love to license our Alt-click technology to them. There (are) lots of things they could do. They have a toolbar. We have many things we'd like to offer Google, and others.

What's next for GuruNet?
Rosenschein: Don't be surprised if you see us expanding to the wireless area. You can only imagine that people with smart phones will be more interested in the kinds of rapid information we offer. And don't be surprised in the future if we expand internationally.

Meaning sites for different languages?
Rosenschein: Right. We're very strong in English, but we get traffic from many dozens of countries every day. Most importantly, expect us to enhance our content offering, so we put more and more useful information in one place. All we do is try to get easy information to you. Look up Intel on Answers.com. You get its history, its profit and loss, the number of employees, the address, the stock price. I defy you to find half that information in five minutes on the Intel site. Or you could go to a search engine, which will show you Intel's site as the first result. I'm not knocking it. But Answers.com is just fewer steps to reliable information.

And what's ahead for the search industry?
Rosenschein: I think the whole area of search user interface is at an early stage. I think there are enormous innovations that are going to come in the next few years in the user experience, and they're almost as important as spidering 8 billion Web pages for relevance. I'm not knocking the search engines. But there's more to life than search engines.

What do you predict with respect to search user interface?
Rosenschein: Let's put it this way. You remember DOS. Tell me the difference between the average search engine interface and the DOS command line. You type in something, you get back results. Maybe people in 1982 couldn't imagine a Mac or Windows UI and they were perfectly happy with DOS. I think there's innovation ahead in the way people look for and retrieve and navigate their information.  

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