Jan 11, 2006

Vertical Search illegal in India?

This news item is very weird. Apparently Naukri has won a case against Indian vertical job search engine Bixee. The explanation given is:

As a result of this what is happening is that the entire database of the plaintiff is available in the website of the defendant No.1 which entails that as and when the defendant No.1’s website becomes popular and gains a large number of hits, the necessity to access the plaintiff’s website would be obviated thereby resulting in great financial loss because the plaintiffs have spent a lot of time, money and energy in developing the database.

That's strange. People have to go to Naukri's site to apply for a job, so where does the question arise of them losing hits?

Wonder what Naukri will do once Google or HotJobs starts scraping their content?

Update: The Bixee team informs by way of the comments that this is just an interim injunction and not a judgement. Phew ! That's a relief ! Hope they come through without any major issues. This actually puts under the scanner the whole new culture of rib-burn-blog !

2 comments:

  1. I agree with you on this gautam. BTW, isn't mashups the 'big thing' currently in Web 2.0?

    Just check out www.simplyhired.com

    They actually make money by refering to Job sites (which is very competitive in the US).

    +Vinu

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  2. Well, now we have a competitor to bixee.com, in the job search space in India. The company who launched comparison shopping site last year, ultop.com, has introduced beta version of Gladoo.com. Interestingly, the site also collects data from naukri.

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