Among the big news items today was the announcement of John Calacanis’ new venture Mahalo - another search engine joining an already crowded field - incorporating the idea of guides (Mahalo employee’s) to help find relevant results.

Now I admit that it is a nice looking site and very responsive to queries not mention that it is also getting a lot of press from the big boys of the tech blogosphere.Out of curiosity I click on the Twitter link under the Technology heading to see what it would display. The breakdown was interesting and definitely not Google like at all but you did get some good information links about Twitter and all things related with one big exception - there was no listing for TwitBox under the Windows Apps section which I am sure is just an oversight on their part . Granted the site is in Alpha so when they can’t return a search result the page will default to showing Google results along with Related pages from Mahalo.

However that is not the point I really want to make here and even though Mahalo is still in its infancy I’ve bookmarked it to use because I do like the way the information is presented so it will be interesting to see how it grows. That said Mahalo has fallen into the same trap that I feel every search engine going up against Google is falling into.

The name.

After all how do you pronounce Mahalo? It definitely doesn’t roll off the tongue and really how do you work the name into a sentence?

This day and age you can have the best search engine around and there are enough companies out there proving just that with more coming everyday to get a piece of the pie but if you can’t get into the popular everyday vernacular you aren’t going to go anywhere. You definitely aren’t going to be a threat to Google.

I wrote about this before - about the need to understand that it’s more than just the engine these days - you need to become the new verb that replaces Google. All these fancy Web 2.0 names so far haven’t even come close to supplanting the everyday usage of google.

Sorry but saying something like “I mahalo’d about you last night” or “I spent last night mahalo’ing for my doctorate…” just doesn’t work. Even though Google is for the most part a made up word is rolls off your tongue, it’s easy to speak both verbally and mentally and it flows in just about any sentence you use it in.

Until you can ingrain yourself in the everyday language you can have the best - the prettiest search around but at the end of the day Google still takes home the money. That said I wish Jason all the best and I will be using his newest child to see how it grows.

Conversation Tags: search, Mahalo, Jason Calacanis