London, UK Virtual internet service provider Virgin Net Ltd yesterday went live with what it says is Mountain View, California-based Google Inc’s first UK-oriented search engine, having dumped previous partner Lycos Inc. The new engine integrates Google’s search technology, which ranks sites according to their importance judged on how many links lead to the site and from where, with a UK-specific URL index compiled by Virgin. The finished index will have around 130,000 unique pages listed, about 10% of which will be UK-based. Alex Dale, publisher of Virgin Net, said relations with Lycos remained amicable despite the Google deal, and the two firms would continue to work together.
