Quixey has raised over $74 million in venture capital for its natural language app search techniques, which let users easily find relevant applications based on keyword or content type. The company hopes to go even further with Quixey functional search, designed to grab the information buried deep within apps as well.
The Mobile Web
In a recent interview with Venture Beat, Quixey Co-Founder Tomer Kagan discussed the mobile Web relative to its World Wide cousin, emphasizing that “apps should be searchable in the same way we felt comfortable with the Web [at] the turn of the century.” In other words, it’s not enough just to search for the titles or genres of apps: users should be able to drill down and search for functions within the apps based on stored data. Four years ago, Kagan was told his idea was too ambitious, so he started with app finding as a ground-floor alternative. Now, Quixey functional search is almost a reality—he expects to issue a release on the Android OS soon, with an iOS version close behind—meaning the company will soon come up against bigger competition.
Calling All Devs
Google and Quixey have different approaches to the same problem. The search giant is also trying to index data on the mobile Web, but tends to take the buy-in and buy-out approach: invest in a company, support its work, and eventually make it a part of the Google ecosystem. As a result, all app data created by the company becomes accessible and indexable to Google.
Quixey, meanwhile, has created a markup language that developers can attach to their apps that the functional search can crawl and index. Currently, this link needs to be added manually, but Kagan wants to have the process automated by the end of 2014, he announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this week.
Ultimately, the goal is to make Quixey the future of mobile apps. Kagan and company believe that providing an easy way to search through the content that apps provide will aid in convincing users that an app is worth downloading. Adding context to mobile content searches allows users to find what they want using their own search terms, rather than sift through app stores’ categories. It’s easy to dismiss Quixey as just another iteration of this app store model, and as Search Engine Land notes, generating awareness for the technology will be a challenge. But if functional search works as promised, it could change the landscape of small-scale content discovery.
Are you looking for a more in-depth app search option, or are existing app stores enough?
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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