If I were white, I'd get less criticism: Lenny Kravitz. The same principle applies with the newly launched search engine "Halalgoogling". If it was not "halalafied" or "for muslims", it would have got less negative criticism. Express tribune have recently published a blog criticizing the search engine. The focal point of aforementioned blog was to target the name of the blog by showing that search engine is not able to filter few so called "haram" words. Is the criticism on "halalgoogling" constructive, I don't think so.
Criticizing the search engine for not being able to filter few not commonly used words, is not justified. The blog published in Express tribune shows that author was more in a hurry to write the blog than to read what the developers have said about the limitations. According to the developers of "halalgoogling" in their blog, if anyone finds objectionable word that is not being filtered, should report or suggest them. Therefore all the criticism so far on the search engine is already answered by the developers.
If we are really sincere to give feedback, we should give constructive feedback that should help the developers to improve their work. I can summarize the following points regardings the search engine that should be asked from the developers.
- Why i should use "halalgoogling" instead of google with safe search? You people have done some really good work technically. However, I don't find any reason to use your search engine. Selling your product by attaching the religion with it, is a recipe to fail. You have numerious examples of such products in a Pakistani market.
- The length of the name "halalgoogling" is also an obsticle for me to use it. Have you ever wonder why "Yahoo", "Google", and "Bing" were so quickly adopted by the people all over the world? The length of the name "halalgoogling" will certainly become obstacle in adopting your search engine.
- The word Google is not a synonym for the word "search". It is a "aween" word and now a propritey name for a search engine company. You have used their name in your search engine name. why?
- Will I get better search results through your search engine? Do you have developed a new "Search algorithm"? If so, when you are going to patent it? Might be Google purchase it from you as they also paid 336 million US dollars to Sanford University to use their patent algorithm "PageRank". The Google got more popularity than the other search engines in 1999 and 2000, only due to the strength of PageRank algorithm to produce better results. Does your algorithm is comparable to PageRank?
- Why there is no credits to real search engine in the results if you are just using filters over someone else search results? If you are using "Google Api" you must mention it somewhere. On one side, you are attaching religion and on otherside you are not giving credit to the real search engine company. Doesn't it contradict with the islamic values?
- The performance of a filtering system goes down with the increase in the filtered word list. How you can convince me that I don't have to wait longer than the renowned search engine? What will be the value of a search engine if i have to wait for longer time for the results?
- Menu bar is not stable. The login link appeared after i search some words. The link didn't responded at all. It just disappeared when I moved back to the first page. This should not happen in a professional website or a search engine.
- Is my privacy safe on your "halalgoogling" search engine? Do your search engine keep history of my search results? What is the purpose of "login" in a search engine if you donot store my personalized searches? If you store the searches, how should I be sure enough of my privacy? Will you target my thoughts using data mining techniques to judge my behaviour and likings?
To summarize all of the above, I would say that "halalgoogling" is a good effort but not convincing enough to force me to use it. The developers should present something other than the religion, to sell their product, otherwise, negative feedback will keep on rolling towards them.
