It seems we weren’t the only ones underwhelmed by the first site of WordCruncher Internet Technologies new Spyhop search engine, which debuted last week (02/18/99). The publicly-traded company found it necessary to issue a statement after the markets closed on Friday in response to some apparently negative feedback to its beta site. It noted that the company’s main focus was meeting its February deadline that it had set itself and talked about publicly in the last two months of last year. At present Spyhop is only searching a relatively small database of local US newspapers. It’s supposed to be different from other search engines in that it shows details of the sites that comprise the results of the search query, rather than just descriptions of the sites found. WordCruncher founder and CEO Daniel Lunt said in the statement that it is important that we start at a level that we know we can manage, adding that the company intends to add no new search data for the next two weeks, but then will phase in additional content. It will take us a little time to catch up with the sheer volume that is represented by some of the search engines, he said. He concludes that company is financially healthy and prepared for the effort that lies ahead. http://www.spyhop.com
SPYHOP: IT’S NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT, BUT IT’S ON TIME
