Redball Search Engine Rolling in Austria On October 1

I see lots and lots of press releases about new search engines. But this one from Redball ( http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040907/uktu004_1.html ) from September 7 was most intriguing.

Don't go running to http://www.redball.info to check out the engine; it hasn't launched yet and won't launch until October 1. Unlike many of the search engine announcements I see it a) isn't trying to index the Web and b) isn't based on pay-for-inclusion. Instead the site says it will be "listing all public forums and news services," with an initial 400GB of information on launch.

From their press release: " More than 100,000 active newsgroups, some 90,000 mailing lists, and a large number of forums demonstrate the potential benefits to internet surfers in these media. Surfers of redball.info will have at their command an average of 10 GB of fresh data each day that was previously inaccessible elsewhere."

They are also promising e-mail alerts to new content, though I'm surprised they don't go one step further and offer RSS feeds.

The site offers little; there's a movie promoting the site that is somebody spinning around in the woods and someone else beating up their computer. There are press materials. There's a registration for their press conference if you're planning to be in Austria at the beginning of October.

Look, a press release can say anything. But I liked some very specific things about this one. I like that they're going for a specialized kind of content. I like that they're offering e-mail alerts from the get-go. I hate that their tag line is "A new but Different Google From Upper Austria." Why not just try to be a new and different Redball.info?

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