from Hacker News

Algolia Acquires Search.io

by daolf on 9/14/22, 7:20 AM with 46 comments

  • by jabo on 9/15/22, 1:48 PM

    Note: I work on Typesense [1], an open source alternative to Algolia.

    This is an interesting acquisition from my perspective because we also just started working on adding vector search to Typesense about a month ago.

    So you can now do nearest neighbor searches by bringing your vectors into Typesense. This lets you do things like similarity searches, recommendations, etc.

    I’d love to have more beta testers use the feature and give us feedback. If you’d like to try it out, please send me an email: jasonb at typesense dOt org

    In any case, congratulations Search.io / Sajari team!

    [1] https://typesense.org/

  • by swyx on 9/15/22, 10:00 AM

    some interesting points from this other piece

    "While the acquisition price was undisclosed, media reports suggest Algolia paid more than $100 million for Search.io"

    https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/articles/french-unicor...

    "Search.io’s mission is to “enable every organization to build smart search and discovery solutions.” The company was founded in 2014 by Hamish Ogilvy and David Howden (originally named Sajari, and recently rebranded to Search.io). "

    Contra the business news article: "Search.io was founded in 2020 by Hamish Ogilvy, who will remain with the merged company in the new role of vice president of artificial intelligence."

    ---

    alright can some non marketing person explain in practical usecases why this "hybrid search" is so disruptive? i feel like the article is trying really hard to communicate how big a deal it is, but it falls flat on me because i simply only have pedestrian search knowledge

  • by O__________O on 9/15/22, 1:01 PM

    From the Search.io homepage, “we are the only search technology supporting full upserts. Your updates are instantly live in milliseconds, no matter the scale.“

    Anyone able to speculate how they were able to achieve this? Or for that matter beyond good sales & marketing - what technically gave them an edge that market actually needed?

  • by chairmanwow1 on 9/15/22, 1:13 PM

    This article is tripping over itself to tell you how great they are.

    PR like this just feels like it was written by a college kid or makes me feel like they are compensating for technical inadequacy.

    No thanks.

  • by mrwnmonm on 9/15/22, 2:57 PM

    These days, I get to know new services only when they get acquired.

  • by shermozle on 9/15/22, 9:16 AM

    Congrats Hamish, Dave, Alex and team!

  • by csmpltn on 9/15/22, 1:16 PM

    > "... both keyword and semantic search in a single API. This new API platform is blazing fast, massively scalable, and, importantly, cost effective. No other vendor offers this today."

    Where's the proof that "no other vendor offers this today"?

  • by tullie on 9/16/22, 2:39 AM

    Congrats to the team at Search.io! Looking forward to seeing what Algolia does with vector search.

  • by Beefin on 9/15/22, 9:55 PM

    I've been interviewing users of vector search and am cataloguing my findings in this repo:

    https://github.com/esteininger/vector-search

    feel free to watch for updates :)

  • by julienfr112 on 9/15/22, 12:00 PM

    What about the competition on the relevant market ?

  • by dsmmcken on 9/15/22, 6:24 PM

    Does this improve or impact docsearch?

  • by esher on 9/15/22, 1:42 PM

    I stopped reading after three words: "Algolia disrupts market …". Goodbye. I am still a fan of DocSearch.