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A Kiwi search engine in China

As predicted by NBR, Google found a compromise to its stand-off with the Chinese government. Last week, the US search giant relocated its China operation to Hong Kong. Residents of Hong Kong - a special administrative region - will be able to view uncenso

Chris Keall
Thu, 01 Apr 2010

As predicted by NBR, Google found a compromise to its stand-off with the Chinese government. Last week, the US search giant relocated its China operation to Hong Kong.

Residents of Hong Kong - a special administrative region - will be able to view uncensored results.

Those in mainland China will still see politically-sensitive searches censored, with the Communist government’s filter able to selectively blog Google’s now Hong Kong-based service, just as it can censor any traffic coming in from outside its border.

In their new home of Hong Kong, Google staff will rub shoulders with tiny Kiwi outfit that recently set up shop in the city state.

Tauranga’s Pingar has already made a modest splash in the UK, being named on Library House’s list of the hottest 100 IPO contenders (Pingar remains private), and securing a member of the House of Lords Technology Committee, Lord Erroll, as a member of its advisory board, and recruiting former Excite.com executive Timothy Burgess to open a London office.

Pingar also became a member of Microsoft’s Start-up Accelerator Programme last year, and venture capitalist and former investment banker Chris de Boer was appointed a non-Executive chairman (Mr de Boer is also a director of the Sam Morgan backed online HR software company Sonar6, and chairs AngelLink, a commercial arm of the University of Waikato that invests in early-stage companies).

New funding plan
Pingar managing director Peter Wren Hilton told NBR his company had been funded by $1.5 million from private individuals so far, which has been enough to fund its initial R&D.

Mr de Boer is currently conducting a review of future funding options, due to be completed in April. At this point, it looks like the company will tap more private equity rather than borrow or list.

Chinese version of Pingar
Mr Wren Hilton travelled to Hong Kong this week, where at press time he was due to host a show-pony visit from trade minister Tim Groser and ethnic affairs minister Pansy Wong. Both were in town this week for the signing of New Zealand’s Closer Economic Partnership with Hong Kong.

The Bay of Plenty company has partnered with Hong Kong’s Compose Systems (best known as a prepress production house for publishers) to create both simplified and traditional Chinese character versions of its search engine, which it bills as “taking the browsing out of browsing”

Pingar’s software looks inside documents posted on the web, then presents search results as a single Adobe PDF or Microsoft XPS document rather than the traditional series of links returned by Google et al (XPS is a Microsoft alternative to Adobe’s ubiquitous document format).

Both the University of Wales and the University of Waikato are supporting Pingar’s R&D efforts.

Pingar's look-under-the-bonnet semantic search software can be used in tandem with any search engine  (Microsoft's SharePoint is used in the explanatory video below). Whether results - from China or elsewhere - are filtered will depend on whether the search engine of your choice is subject to censorship.

Chris Keall
Thu, 01 Apr 2010
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A Kiwi search engine in China
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