AnooX is a different kind of search engine. The management claims that they are better than Google and Yahoo because user’s searches are first by computers, and then rated on relevance by other human users. What makes them really different though, is that they’ve recently announced that they are a not-for profit organization. This has some very interesting implications:

• AnooX will only be a search engine. This means they can concentrate on only one thing, search, unlike Google, Yahoo, MSN, who are involved in different businesses and always thinking about what others to get into.
• If AnooX does have any profits, they will give the profit away to AnooX community members, and to other non-profits working for public interest causes.
• AnooX will minimize pay-per-click advertising rates.

My biggest concern about the rating feature was that people would game it and choose their own companies results as the best ones. Obviously that was a huge concern of AnooX too: to become a voting member you need to sign up and authenticate your identity. Authenticating your identity can be done either by making a $5.00 (refundable in 60 days) donation with a CreditCard, or by mailing in a Notarized copy of your ID.

So after you’ve tried AnooX, login to BuzzShout and review it. Tell us all if it really is better than Google and Yahoo.

I also recommend checking out the Read/Write Web series “Search 2.0 vs. Traditional Search”– part 1 and part 2.