Search Engine Placement

Rich Skrenta, who created the first computer virus called the Elk Cloner, has a new challenge for the computer world. He is challenging popular search engine Google. Skrenta is designing a new search engine, which he is calling Blekko.

After leaving one of his former companies, Topix, he and some co-workers raised two million dollars in seed funding in September 2007. He received the money from Baseline Ventures and other contributors.

The company is still very underground and in the beginning stages of development. The Blekko website currently has only a picture of a puppet on it, which his daughter made.

Although not a proponent of PageRank, Skrenta has not revealed any of the details of the website or how it will be competing with Google. One of the few details that have been given is that Skrenta has been researching other improvements on indexing and query saving and user search experiences.

It may be a while before we know any more details about the new search engine. Skrenta says he may not have a public prototype until 2009.